


You Could Dress This Wound

by myownremedy



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cutting, Drug Addiction, F/M, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Minor Character Death, Podfic Available, References to Suicide, Self-Discovery, Suicide, implied past sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-08 08:36:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myownremedy/pseuds/myownremedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“A wound gives off its own light</i><br/><i>surgeons say. If all the lamps in this house were turned out</i><br/><i>you could dress this wound</i><br/><i>by what shines from it.”</i><br/>—	Anne Carson, from <i>The Beauty of the Husband, a fictional essay in 29 tango</i></p><p>The one where Mark wakes up and discovers he can see other people’s pain as light.<br/>Or, the Glowing AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abriata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abriata/gifts).



>   
>    
> A loose fusion of TSN with Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier and I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak. Title from an essay/novel by Anne Carson. Divided into five parts. Set during and after the depositions. Thanks to Annie for the beta, Rachel for the Spanish help, Diana for more Spanish help, Rose for frank beta’ing, and Venla for the encouragement, and Jill and Emily and Jackie and Berry and basically every single person because this was so drawn out and awful, UGH. For Abriata because she seemed excited about this idea.  
> there's a[fanmix](http://8tracks.com/myownremedy/you-could-dress-this-wound)!  
> My TSN masterpiece?? We just don't know.
> 
> edit: removed the magical realism tag because that's been turning some folks off!  
> edit: NOW WITH SOME FANTASTIC ART BY [MARIE](http://henleyreevs.tumblr.com/).  
> edit: my friend lachlan made a [vlog](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP1HqeBeBl4) inspired by this fic! how cool is that?! please watch if you have about five minutes.  
> edit: rhea314 made a podfic of this fic!!!!!! IT'S AMAZING GO LISTEN [HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1093452).
> 
> Disclaimer: if Aaron Sorkin gets to write grossly inaccurate RPF about Mark Zuckerberg and make a lot of money off of it and win an Oscar, I get to write this and make absolutely no money. Please don't share this with anyone who is in it.  
> edit (4-13-15): this is a transformative work. I make no money off of it. I do not own what inspired this work (The Social Network), but I do own this work itself and hold full copyright over it. Thank you.

It starts with a headache.

 

It’s the first day of depositions. Eduardo sits across from him, hair slicked back and eyes cold and dark, and spells out his name; _E-D-U-A-R-D-O  S-A ~~-~~ V-E-R-I-N._

Mark is flanked by his lawyers; the stenographer sits at the head of the table. He is concentrating on tuning out Eduardo’s voice, hands typing out imaginary code against the surface of the polished table, when his headache starts.

There’s a buzzing in his skull, settling into his brain and he can almost feel it, electricity jumping around, making him shake his head to clear it. Eduardo is talking about the AEPi party, and he pauses, affronted, so Mark stares at him.

He didn’t shake his head at Eduardo, even though what Eduardo’s saying is not what happened. He’s not shaking his head at Eduardo, even though this entire lawsuit is bullshit.

 

(Chris had taken Mark aside and said, _Mark, you’re not the idiot 19-year-old you were. You understand why Eduardo is doing this, right?_

And Mark had said _no, and I don’t care, it’s my company, he doesn’t have any claims to it._

Chris’s eyes had gotten sad and his mouth had tightened into a small, hard line, and he had walked away.

Mark overheard him remarking to Dustin that _maybe he doesn’t want to understand_ , but he hadn’t heard Dustin’s response.

It’s not like he cares. This is a waste of his time.)

 

The only good thing about this lawsuit is that he gets to see Eduardo again, gets to see how much he’s changed – still tan and lean, but his hair is longer, slicked back, and his eyes are colder and he acts differently. Mark can’t quite put his finger on it, has never been good at – has never cared about – cataloguing people’s reactions and understanding them. He knows that Eduardo is different, and doesn’t try to understand why.

But Mark’s different too – isn’t that what Chris had tried to tell him? – and he dismisses it, because Eduardo is suing him for six hundred million dollars and Mark has other things to worry about.

 

By lunch, Mark’s sweating and gripping the table. Everyone keeps shooting him weird looks, which he tries to ignore – he wonders, distantly, if this is caffeine withdrawal or something – but he doesn’t argue when a pretty brunette girl presses some Advil into his hands.

He looks up when he swallows them and finds Eduardo watching him, lips pressed together and eyes very dark, and Mark wonders what that look means.

He decides he doesn’t care.

 

When Gretchen prompts Eduardo about the diversity thing, Mark’s head hurts so much he thinks he’s going to throw up from it. But he’s not stupid, he knows what’s going on; Gretchen asks Eduardo – like she actually cares – why he thinks Mark said _it probably was a diversity thing_. Sy interjects and Mark can’t believe this is happening, this is so stupid, his head hurts so fucking much and he doesn’t understand why this is necessary.

Gretchen says: “Sy, if you’ll let me continue with my line of questioning—”

And Sy says: “What are you suggesting?”

So Mark grits out, clutching the table as a fresh wave of pain rolls through his head: “They’re suggesting I was jealous of Eduardo for getting punched by the Phoenix and began a plan to screw him out of a company I hadn’t even invented yet.” He tries to sink as much disdain into that as he can, tries to glare at Gretchen even though his vision is blurring.

Gretchen doesn’t even blink. “Were you?”

Eduardo is watching this very closely, Mark notices – _why is he noticing this?_ – and Sy says, “Gretchen –” In a way that means _don’t answer that_ , but Mark can’t contain himself.

“Jealous of Eduardo?”

“Stop typing, we’re off the record,” Sy says and the stenographer stops. Mark sees her flex her wrist out of the corner of his eye, but he’s staring intently at Gretchen even as lights burst in front of his eyes.

 

He hears the pretty brunette girl say: “Mark, you don’t look so good” but he ignores her; the thought that he screwed Eduardo out of Facebook because he was jealous is so unacceptable, so grossly inaccurate, that he has to make this clear to her.

“Ma’am, I know you’ve done your homework and so you know that money isn’t a big

part of my life, but at the moment I could buy Mount Auburn Street, take the Phoenix Club and turn it into my ping pong room.”

His last coherent thought is that he doesn’t even play ping pong.

\---

When he wakes up, light is shining on his closed eyelids and Mark can hear voices.

“Someone call an ambulance,” someone says, and fingers come to rub Mark’s head gently, dulling the ache and the roaring within his skull.

“Wardo,” he mutters, and is rewarded with a quiet noise of surprise.

He opens his eyes.

 

He’s looking up into the sun, into something that is pulsing and shining, wavering between a deep orange gold and a shiny white-yellow; it makes him groan and shut his eyes again, pressing the palms of his hands into them.

He’s never understood this urge, to rub and press at something that hurts – how will that help – but he obeys, curling into himself, not really caring where he is or who is looking at him. A hand sweeps down his spine, moves up to cradle the base of his skull and he flinches away.

“Mark,” Eduardo’s voice says. “Mark, can you hear me?”

 

“We have to call 911,” Eduardo says, urgently, and Mark shudders, because the light is growing brighter and he can see the map of veins on his eyelids, thinks he can see everything clearly despite closing his eyes. “What if he’s having an aneurysm?”

“Has he ever had headaches like this before?” Sy asks. Mark can hear someone – the girl that gave him Advil– talking on the phone, sounding only a little harried.

“No,” Eduardo says. “I mean, he’s had migraines, but never like this.”

“Please stop talking,” Mark says finally, and he reaches out, shuddering, trying to find something to grip, to hold onto.

He ends up clinging to someone’s knee – Eduardo’s, he thinks – and then he hears Eduardo muttering worriedly to himself in Portuguese.

Irritated, Mark drags his eyes open – can’t Eduardo shut up? – but it’s bright still, the lights pulsing, and then he turns his head and he can see Eduardo.

 

It’s like his skin is on fire, like he’s lit from within. Mark has watched candles flicker in frosted glass lanterns and this is the same affect but a hundred times brighter, a hundred times worse– and then the light settles on a dull orange-gold, pulsing like a heartbeat.

“Why are you glowing?” his mouth is dry and he swallows, wants to push himself away, but Eduardo is half cradling Mark’s head in his lap.

At his question, Eduardo’s lips twist up and his brow furrows, and the light grows a little brighter, a little yellower.

 “Mark, what are you talking about?” he sounds confused, worried even; Mark scowls.

“You’re glowing. Like…like you’re on fire, or something.”

Eduardo is panicking; his hands flutter by his sides ad he bites his lip, and Mark thinks _this is a hallucination, this is from the migraine_.

He’s repeating that over and over to himself when he passes out again.

\---

He has vague memories of what happened next – the needle they stuck into his vein like an apology, the cool pressure of a cloth on his head, the quiet beeping of the monitors.

 

There’s snatches of conversation too, and later he’ll identify the voices, but for now he hears stuff like _He said Eduardo was glowing_ and _Has this ever happened before_ and _Mark if you didn’t want to be deposed you could have just settled you didn’t have to almost have an aneurysm._

He blames the drugs for what he thinks – _I thought hell had brimstone_ and _is this what happens when you betray your best friend_ and _I don’t believe in God I think that means he can’t punish me_ and _Eduardo looks stupid with gelled back hair._

But mostly, he sleeps. They’ve put a mask over his eyes and everything is dark and cool, and he relaxes into unconsciousness like he never has. Before, sleep was something that would make him code faster or would make everyone leave him alone. Now, sleep is a way to escape.

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t do well in a reality that makes no sense. At least dreams aren’t supposed to make sense.

But he doesn’t sleep, he remembers – it’s like he’s dreaming in sepia, but brighter, because everything is yellow and everyone is glowing, light wrapped around them or concentrated in parts of their bodies or hovering and filling their heads and hearts. He doesn’t try to make sense of it, tries to shake the dreams off and go back to sleep, but he keeps returning to one scene.

_What did you mean, get left behind?_ Eduardo asks and his head is full of dull gold, just as his eyes are dull and sad and black.

\---

He doesn’t mention the light to the doctors, tells them that he feels fine. They tell him that it was probably a tension headache and that yoga or chiropractic will do him so good, and then they release him into Chris and Dustin’s waiting arms.

Both are glowing slightly and Mark squints at them.

 

“Mark,” Dustin says.

“You scared us,” Chris snaps out and Mark presses his lips together and shrugs – _I didn’t do it on purpose_ – and lets them drive him to his house.

He makes them leave, insisting he’ll be fine. Chris reminds him that depositions resume tomorrow and makes him promise not to come into the office today and Mark hums and nods and ignores them until they leave.

 

His house is cool, stark white with stainless steel appliances. Mark avoids the kitchen, the TV, the computer; everything that glows, that emits light.

Eduardo – Mark stumbles when he thinks that and doesn’t quite know why – used to tease Mark about being a caveman, a creature of the shadows. Mark thinks that it’s quite accurate right now; he draws the blinds in his bedroom and sits on his bed in the dark, hugging his knees and staring blankly at the opposite wall.

\---

He’s heard the stories, of course – the claims that all of this technology and abundance and whatever the fuck else you can blame have caused… _changes_ in humanity. There’s the woman that can speak in a dead language without having learned it and scientists can’t figure her out. There’s the man who claims he’s a Breatharian; he gets his nutrients from air. There are people who bend spoons and talk to the dead and people who claim to be ‘psychic archaeologists.’ Mark knows this because his fascination with the unknown and unexplained has always been stronger than his hatred of stupidity and things he can’t understand.

 

But he’s never heard of people seeing light like he sees. He’s seen pictures of it, mostly from the stained glass windows at churches, where people in robes are depicted with enormous golden halos around them, and that’s almost what he sees, but not quite.

Eduardo had been lit from within, like he had fire for blood, like light was running through his veins and powering his heart. Chris and Dustin’s light had been thinner, dimmer – and Chris’s had been the dimmest of all.

It doesn’t make sense; Mark rejects religion and decides that’s not what it is or what it means.

 

The problem is, he doesn’t know _what_ it is and that scares him. His fascination with the unknown is fine from a distance; when it’s him that he doesn’t understand, when his most basic self is part of the unknown, he panics. He has no baseline, nothing to compare this to and no way to understand it, and he tries to ignore the buzzing in his skin and the tightening of his chest when he thinks this.

It feels, stupidly, like betrayal.

\---

It’s not until the next day of the depositions that he understands.

He gets there early – Chris insists on dropping him off – and wanders into the deposition room. No one’s there but the stenographer, and she’s flexing her wrists and rubbing the flesh of her inner forearm with a grimace.

Her arm is lit from within, lines of bright white light outlining her fingers, looping around her wrist, and running up to cradle her elbow. She has her finger on one such line, rubbing it like that will help, and Mark suddenly understands.

“Do you have carpal tunnel?” he asks, and she looks up at him, shocked.

He doesn’t need an answer – he’s seen that expression and those motions before, seen programmers flex their wrist like something will pop free and the pain will stop.

 “Yes,” she says finally, looking at him strangely – he realizes, belatedly, that she was there when he passed out, or whatever happened, and he nods at her and sits in his chair, drumming his hands against the tabletop and thinking.

 

_I can see pain as light._

It doesn’t even make sense, this isn’t supposed to be possible, isn’t supposed to happen to him, but it is and it has.

He’s still thinking about this when Sy and the pretty brunette girl – Marylin, he remembers that now – walk in and sit on either side of them. Mark watches them and thinks about pain, thinks about how personal it is and how he doesn’t quite understand it, and then wonders why this happened to him.

There’s no explanation for it, which makes him twitch nervously.

Discreetly, he presses down on the pressure point between his thumb and forefinger, does it until it hurts, waits for the light to bloom around his fingers.

But it doesn’t.

_It doesn’t work on me_ he thinks.

For some reason, that makes sense; he’s never needed help to know what he’s feeling.

 

When Eduardo comes in, he’s still dull gold, though it’s muted. It doesn’t hurt to look at him anymore; he just looks warm, like the sun.

Mark thinks that maybe this will be awkward, because Eduardo was cradling Mark’s head in his lap and was worried about him, but is also suing him for $600,000,000. It doesn’t make sense and he doesn’t like it; he wants to shake Eduardo until the answers fall out of his mouth.

 

Mark doesn’t really listen to the first part of the depositions; he wants to understand why Eduardo’s light is so different than everyone else’s.

Eduardo says _I wish he’d been asleep_ and the light pulses brighter, even as he makes a face; Mark shakes his head again, and Eduardo glares at him.

It’s not worth it, not worth arguing with Eduardo because the depositions are Eduardo’s versions of events and Mark knows that; Sy and Chris have explained that too him. But he can’t stop himself from rejecting Eduardo’s blatant rewriting of history, because _that’s not what happened_ and Mark thinks that if they want to know what happened they should ask an unbiased source.

He had mentioned this once and the pretty brunette girl – Marilyn, he suddenly remembers – had explained that there weren’t any unbiased sources, that no one is ever unbiased when things happen to them.

Mark thinks, absently, that maybe that’s the same with pain; it’s never the same from one person to another. Even if everyone else has experienced the same thing, it will hurt differently.

 

Sy brings up the chicken and Mark scowls at him, distracted from staring at Eduardo, frustrated that Sy was doing this even when Mark had told him explicitly not too.

“This isn’t happening,” Eduardo says, upset, and Mark fights the urge to sit up, because the light has turned from dull gold to bright yellow-white.

“I have here an article from The Crimson,” Sy says.

“Jesus Christ.” The light pulses even brighter and Mark thinks, absently, about the chicken and how funny it was, how _It’s better to be accused of necrophilia._

“I did not torture the chicken,” Eduardo is saying. Then, suddenly, his words rush out: “I do not torture chickens! Are you crazy?”

“No and settle down please,” Sy tells him; Mark props his head up on his hand and stares at Eduardo without any pretense, watching the mixing of the light, dull gold and bright yellow white that is pulsing faster, like it hurts more.

Does he have a headache?

“Mr. Zuckerberg was cheating on his final exam?” Gretchen asks, and Eduardo looks pained.

“I’d rather not answer that, Gretchen,” he says and Mark _knows_ that he’s pained, because the colors are so bright he blinks. Eduardo doesn’t have himself under control and Mark thinks that the depositions are ruining him.

He doesn’t quite understand why.

“Why not?” Gretchen prompts. She’s like a dog with a bone – Mark’s dad says that sometimes – and won’t leave it alone, even though Eduardo is upset, even though Eduardo is her own client.

_Bitch._

“Because I’m not suing him for cheating on his final exam, that’s not what friends do.”

_We’re not friends anymore_ Mark thinks – he remembers this being made this clear because he couldn’t call Eduardo by his first name, he has to call him _Mr. Saverin_ – and grinds his teeth.

“Well you just told us he was cheating,” Gretchen says, looking smug.

Eduardo blinks, turns to stare at Mark. “Oops.” He mutters, then refocuses. He’s glowing white-yellow now, the dull orange gold almost gone, and Mark thinks he almost understands, but – “You told your lawyers that I was torturing animals?!” He demands and Mark just stares at him.

Sy cuts in. “No, he didn’t tell us about it at all. Our litigators are capable of finding a Crimson article. In fact when we raised the subject with him he defended you.”

Eduardo’s light is searing and then dull gold floods it and something flashes across his face – _regret?_ – as Mark says, like he doesn’t care: “Oops.”

\---

But he doesn’t understand, doesn’t _really_ understand, until Gretchen asks Eduardo what his shares were diluted down to and Eduardo says, like he’s defeated, “.03%.”

He turns away, glowing like a sun, a mix of the two kinds of light, and then turns back to look at Mark, face working like he’s trying not to cry.

“I was your only friend.” He says. “You had one friend.”

He’s glowing – he’s shining – so brightly that Mark feels his breath stutter, his heart clamor against his ribs and it _hurts_ , because if he sees pain then Eduardo is ablaze with it and it’s all his fault.

“I want to settle,” he announces.

Eduardo is staring at him, disbelief written all over his face – Mark doesn’t need any fancy light to read that expression – and he can hear a shocked inhale from Sy, and a small, satisfied noise from Gretchen.

He glances around, sees that Marilyn is looking at him with a look of approval, but he doesn’t care about her; he only cares about Eduardo.

“Why now?” Eduardo asks him, and there’s something ugly in his expression. “Is it because you know you won’t win?”

“No,” Mark says, honest. “I don’t care about winning.”

“Of course you don’t,” Eduardo mutters.

“I’m sorry,” Mark tells him. “I’m sorry it hurt you so badly.”

This is apparently not the right thing to say; Eduardo gapes at him, incredulous, glowing white yellow, and then gets up and leaves. You can’t slam a glass door but Eduardo tries too.

\---

Sy and Marilyn say that they’ll produce the proper documents and have them ready by tomorrow, so Mark is sent home.

He doesn’t really know what to do or what to say; he texts Chris and Dustin and says _come over_ because he doesn’t believe in chat speak.

 

It’s not really easy to say _I see pain as light_ so he doesn’t, thinks it’s a secret that he’ll keep to himself. Instead he says “I’ve decided to settle,” and tries not to be insulted when Dustin and Chris look so surprised.

“Why?” Chris asks and Mark fidgets, uncomfortable.

“I didn’t realize… how badly I hurt Wardo,” he mumbles finally, not looking at them. “I just… I didn’t want to draw it out anymore, you know?”

The looks on Chris’s and Dustin’s faces are almost worth it. Mark doesn’t need light to see the pride there and he flushes, because he doesn’t really deserve it.


	2. Andrew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for minor character death and mentions of a terminal illness.

Pain is something that puzzles Mark, because it’s everywhere and that’s something he had never fully comprehended. He knows that people hurt, that people carry pain with them like a burden, but he had known that in the same abstract way that he recognizes photography and music; he doesn’t know how it works and doesn’t care, just knows that it’s there.

But this…this is different, because it’s bright and he can’t get rid of it, can’t even wear sunglasses to cheat it.

He thinks, maybe, that the universe has kicked him in the teeth, because he’s never cared about pain before, never really set much in stock in _feelings_ ; he accepts logic and rationality, accepts _if a + b, then c; if c – b, then a._

It could even be said – he acknowledges this with irritation, but doesn’t bother sharing it with anyone – that he created Facebook to skip the delicate social dance of manners and cues, because he’s not good at it. A white page with blue bars and sections for interests, hobbies, favorite things and relationship status is so much easier than trying to read the nuances of people’s expressions, of their body language.

(He thinks of Eduardo, straight-backed but hollow-eyed looking in the depositions, and scowls; there’s no point in noticing this now.)

He lists his hobbies as _making the world more open_ and _connecting people_ and maybe this is some sort of huge joke, because people are more open to now that he can see their pain.

But he never asked for this, stresses that to himself; _I didn’t want this._

 

Mark spends time outside of the office, after the depositions. Chris and Dustin let him be, probably thinking he needs space or something. Truthfully, Mark people watches; he drives to Stanford and sits on a picnic bench and just watches.

_I don’t want this_ he thinks as he watches a Latina woman walk by with glowing white lines on her arms, slightly muffled by the long sleeves she’s wearing even in this heat. _I never wanted this_. A man walks by, white light wrapped around his knee and Mark grunts, wonders how long the man will wait before getting that checked out.

It’s gradual; his realization that white light is physical pain. It makes sense, in hindsight; it’s always concentrated _in_ the body, like it’s being held in check by the sinews and the blood vessels, something caught in this delicate webbing.

The yellower light is emotional pain – seeing this is worse – and Mark thinks, finally, that maybe the dull orange gold he kept seeing in Eduardo were memories, and feels a flood of guilt, feels his cheeks flush.

It’s not a good thing, for your best friend to look at you with only painful memories on their mind.

\---

Mark considers, distantly, becoming a doctor or a vet – he would know what was wrong with his patients – but he has no interest in that.  _I didn’t ask for this_ he repeats to himself. _I have no obligations_.

But pain is an epidemic and Mark can’t escape it, even at work – _especially_ at work. There’s so much hanging between him and Chris and Dustin, so much left unsaid. He wonders if they could ever understand why he did what he did, wonders if they want to hear the explanation or if they want to forget it happened.

Chris is good at what he does, and Mark has visual proof of this, because Chris can keep his emotions tapped down and in check – they’re always dim, his worry or his painful memories – and he thinks that he’s lucky to have Chris, because Chris was always Eduardo’s friend and yet somehow, he chose Mark.

 

He mentions this, absently, to him – _Thanks, Chris –_ and Chris scowls.

“It’s not like that, Mark,” he says patiently, but his southern drawl peeks out. It only does this when he’s irritated, so Mark clutches at the hem of his hoodie and waits. “It’s not – not a matter of choosing.”

“Okay,” Mark agrees, except he doesn’t agree, doesn’t get that, and then immediately regrets it, because light flares around Chris suddenly, almost the same color as his hair.

 

Dustin is easier to be around – he lives mostly in the present, and his emotions are fleeting, even if they are… _intense._ Dustin likes to think he holds grudges, but he doesn’t; he forgives people easily, getting over himself and moving on.

(Mark wonders, absently, what would have been different if he had learned to do that.)

So Dustin never glows for very long and Mark is grateful, because he spends a lot of time with Dustin, probably more time then he spends with Chris, and it’s easier to be around someone like Dustin, someone who is so relaxed and so unlike, well, Mark.

He still debates sitting them down and trying to explain, because if Eduardo didn’t understand then how could they – but he doesn’t want to deal with the fall out, doesn’t want to see the dull gold glow encircling both their heads like halos.

\---

Mark tries to be passive, tries not to let what he sees affect what he does, because he has an edge over everyone else and it feels…wrong, somehow.

But Sean changes that, because Sean changes everything.

 

Sean had disappeared during the depositions, probably off to Costa Rica or something, and Mark hadn’t really missed him. Sean is his de facto best friend, sure, but he’s a best friend that doesn’t always have to be with you, that you don’t always _miss_. Maybe Mark is bad at friendship, but he rarely reaches out, rarely sees the point in it – if people want him, they’ll come find him.

Sean understands this, by some unspoken rule, and always seeks Mark out, and that’s why Sean wanders into Mark’s office, wearing a sports jacket and fancy jeans.

“Mark, you asshole, aren’t you going to say hello?” Sean calls, but he’s grinning. Mark blinks up at him and smiles back, noting Sean is tanner, his hair a little blonder – but he’s distracted by the dull gold that… _fills_ Sean. It’s like he’s imbued with it.

Mark wonders what those memories are from, wonders if it’s any of his business.

 

(He wonders what someone would see if they looked at him, because he doesn’t…he doesn’t _hate_ himself, but every time he remembers Eduardo lit from within, his stomach twists and he feels guilt, feels self-loathing.

_Who screws their best friend out of a company?_ Mark wonders, late at night, when it’s safe to wonder these things. _Why did I do that?_

_For the good of the company_ he answers back.

Then: _but I could have done it differently_.)

 

“How was Costa Rica?” Mark asks, to distract himself, and Sean sits down in one of his chairs and talks at length about it, about the girls and the booze, and Mark listens to Sean’s rushed words and thinks about running away.

“I’m telling you, Mark, you’ve gotta come to Costa Rica, maybe get a tan. It’ll be good for you. The chicks there are so hot,”

“Yeah, I’m not really into chicks,” Mark reminds him, only half listening.

“Well the dudes there are ripped. Whatever you’re into, man, we can find it for you.”

“Are the people happy there?” Mark asks, and Sean looks at him like he’s grown a third eyeball, like he’s utterly nuts.

“As happy as people can ever be,” Sean says slowly. “I don’t think anyone’s _happy_.”

“Yeah,” Mark fiddles with his phone, flipping it open and then closed. “I don’t really think so either.”

 

He notices people more, because of this, tells himself that’s fine because he’s CEO and he only ‘oversees development’ now, he doesn’t actively _do_ anything.

Chris has been encouraging him to get to know his employees for years now and Mark finally obeys, wandering out of his office and staring around at everyone. They ignore him, because they’re coding – he remembers telling an intern _good boy_ because he was always wired in – and so he’s free to look at them, see them glow and backlit by whatever pain is wrapped around the core of them.

Seeing Sean glowing dull gold _everywhere_ , not just around his head, had woken something in Mark – a certain terror of things unknown, a need to know why pain existed, a need to understand the light that everyone was giving off.

He knows that wounds are hot, knows that if you slice someone open in the winter air they will steam, but he’s never seen anything like this, never seen people glowing like the milky way at night, some dimmer and some brighter, but all ultimately lit from within.

 

There’s a man – a programmer – that blazes like a star, the light radiating from him in waves, bouncing off his bones and rebounding, growing brighter as the day goes by. Mark can barely look at him, can’t stomach the light, the burning of it.

It’s worse, he thinks, when he realizes that it’s all yellow light; it’s all from an emotional wound that is raw and open to the touch.

He wanders down to find Chris, because Chris knows everyone and everything, and ends up leaning a hip against the doorway, waiting for Chris to get off the phone.

“There’s a programmer,” Mark says as soon as Chris is done, because he doesn’t understand niceties, they’re not very efficient, and Chris looks up, eyebrows raised. “He’s um…he has a beard and is sort of plump, and older.”

“That would be Andrew,” Chris says after a minute. “Did you fire him?”

“No,” Mark thinks, for half a second, about the word _fire_ and how ironic it is. “I want to know what’s wrong with him.”

Chris blinks at Mark, cocking his head to the side and Mark raises an eyebrow back. He thinks maybe they’re doing the silent-talking-thing, even though he never really understands, but he knows that Chris is surprised and he squashes down his own irritation at this, because Chris has every right to be surprised; Mark has never cared before.

“How did you know something was wrong with him?” Chris demands. Mark doesn’t answer, doesn’t have a good reason, so he just waits until Chris sighs and rubs his eyes. “His wife is dying. She has cancer.”

There’s nothing to say to that, really, and Mark absorbs that in silence. Chris is glowing slightly, like the thought of someone he doesn’t even know dying pains him, and Mark wonders why Chris befriended him.

“You’re really empathetic,” he doesn’t mean to say it aloud but Chris’s eyebrows shoot up, and Mark feels his mouth twist. “I’m not.”

“I know,” Chris’s voice is soft, almost gentle. “But you’re getting better, Mark.”

_Is that the point of this?_ Mark wonders. He doesn’t say anything, just nods and leaves, waving goodbye.

 

There’s nothing he can do for Andrew – _Andrew Green_ , according to Facebook – and this bothers Mark. He doesn’t like being helpless and he doesn’t really understand this, doesn’t understand why he sees pain if he can’t… _fix it_ , or something.

It occurs to him that this is the ultimate aspect of the human condition, that people are in pain and it just _sucks_ because no one can fix it and you can’t do anything about it, you’re just in pain and you have to deal with it and there’s no good reason for it.

Still.

(Mark wonders what he would do if his spouse was dying of cancer – he wouldn’t leave his spouse’s side, wouldn’t go to work, would sit there and read to them or hold their hand or something and try to make them as comfortable as possible. This sudden urge of – tenderness? Is that the right word? He doesn’t know – confuses him, makes him stumble on the stairs when it floats into his mind.

Later that night he imagines Eduardo on an operating table with a buzzed head and he has to bite down on his lip, hard, to keep from yelling out in terror.)

He watches Andrew carefully, reads his profile and notes that the man is originally from Seattle and that he’s a Sounders fan, that his interests include peach cobbler and poetry.

But there’s nothing so personal, Mark thinks, as seeing someone’s pain, seeing it reflecting off their face, illuminating every pore and every hair and every line until it’s so bright he has to look away, his eyes stinging.

 

“Why is Andrew still working?” Mark asks Chris a week later, and Chris looks up and tries to smooth the exasperation out of his expression.

“Hmm?”

“Andrew. The one with the dying wife. Why is he still working?” Mark shifts impatiently. “Shouldn’t he be home with her or something?”

“I don’t know, Mark. It’s not really any of my business.” Chris frowns at him. “Why do you care so much?”

“I…” How does he explain that Andrew is in so much pain that even if Mark didn’t have to squint against the light of him, he would have noticed? There’s no proper explanation and he fidgets, offers a shrug.

“I know he’s being trying to work something out with the insurance,” Chris offers finally, his eyes meeting Mark’s. “Maybe he can’t afford to take time off.”

\---

Mark doesn’t believe in religion but he believes in those heavy words that are almost sacred: fate, and destiny. He likes the Greeks’ idea of fate, that there are three women who weave your life in its entirety, making you cross and loop around with other people, snipping your thread for an abrupt death or fraying it so you will waste away.

Andrew’s wife is wasting away – her thread is fraying – and it’s hurting him.

Mark thinks about destiny and fate and then thinks about why he’s here, why he can see pain, and what he’s supposed to do about it.

He’s supposed to do _something_ , he knows that now, knows that this wouldn’t just _happen_.

 

(Sometimes he entertains the idea that he’s dying of a brain tumor that’s making him hallucinate and this is why he can ‘see pain’ but he knows this is real, knows it’s not a tumor, knows this deep in his bones.)

 

He remembers Eduardo remarking to him, once, _you’re different then anyone I’ve ever met because instead of complaining about a problem, you fix it._ He had been talking about course-match, of course, and Mark had been secretly pleased. He thinks he should have not kept that a secret, should have smiled at Eduardo.

It’s too late to be thinking like that.

_I can’t fix this_ he tells himself, punching his pillow until it’s more comfortable. _I can’t fix Andrew’s wife._

 

Mark looks up how long Andrew has been working for them – two years and some change – and thinks about how people don’t always fix things, but they can make them better.

He goes to the CFO, who directs him to human resources, which directs him to the insurance representative. Mark doesn’t like him. By the end of the meeting, the insurance representative doesn’t like Mark either, but he’s agreed to what Mark wants and that’s all that matters.

_I’m CEO, bitch_ Mark thinks to himself as he walks down the hall towards the fishbowl, flip-flops loud in the empty hallway.

He finds Andrew slumped in his chair, staring sightlessly at the screen, and Mark hovers behind him for a minute before clearing his throat, shoving his hands into his hoodie pockets so he won’t fidget.

He feels like this is a fencing match and if he makes the wrong move, he’s going to lose.

Mark doesn’t like losing.

 

“Andrew?” The man looks up at him and Mark smiles briefly. “Hi. Can I talk to you?”

Andrew just nods, doesn’t even argue or ask why. He’s shimmering, yellow-white and it flares as they move into Mark’s office and Mark shuts the door behind him.

Mark blinks at him, points at a chair and Andrew sits, obedient, flushed and nervous. Mark realizes that Andrew must think he’s about to be fired.

“I know about your wife,” Mark announces, and the man just _crumples_ , light flaring so brightly that Mark squints, resists the urge to shade his eyes.

He thinks that maybe all Andrew wanted was for his pain to be acknowledged because the man is sitting there, across from Mark, and he looks ridiculous, relief and pain and regret and dismay and – gratitude? – all slapped across his face. And then, incredibly, he begins to cry, which makes Mark lean back.

He doesn’t want this, doesn’t want to watch the light to crawl down the length of Andrew’s spine and curl around his heart.

 

(If Mark hadn’t already believed, absently, in love, this would have convinced him.)

 

“Right,” he says, because maybe he’s touchedbuthe’s not here to hold Andrew’s hand and offer him tissues. “I’ve worked out a deal with our human resources offices. You can take some personal time off – as long as you need too – so you can be with your wife, okay? We’ll have your job waiting for you and everything when you get back.” _After your wife dies._

This must be the right thing to do, to say, because Andrew stares at Mark, wiping his nose on the back of his hand.

“Why are you doing this?” He asks, voice hoarse. “I mean, thank you, I can’t thank you enough, but…”

There’s no good answer to give him; Mark never has one, it seems.

“Because I can,” he says finally. “Because you need it.”

\---

Mark didn’t do it to be a good person, he did it to…help. Maybe help is the wrong word.

He did it so he wouldn’t have to look up and see someone shining like a miniature sun.

 

(Mark has no trouble admitting to himself that he did it because he’s selfish, not because he’s a good person. It’s almost easier to accept this fact then entertain the notion of _change_.)

 

He can’t explain this to Dustin or Chris, who are both so ridiculously proud of him that Mark flushes and tries to shrug off their praise.

“That was very kind of you, Mark,” Chris says, looking pleased, and Mark wonders if this will get out to the press, if this will be good for PR. He says as much and Dustin rolls his eyes.

“We don’t care about the PR of it, Mark,” Dustin sounds so exasperated that Mark blinks at him. “It was a decent thing to do, a really nice thing to do. You gave that man –”

“– Andrew,” Mark tells him, because it’s important.

“You gave _Andrew_ more time with his wife. I think that’s all anyone could ask for in this situation.”

Mark disagrees, thinks that he would ask for his spouse to not die, to be healthy, but that’s not really the point. He knows that, at least, knows sometimes he gets so focused on the details that he misses the point.

“I told him we’d give him his job back,” Mark tells Dustin, later, at Dustin’s desk. He doesn’t ask for permission because he’s _CEO, bitch_ but he knows this means more work for Dustin. An apology has snuck into his voice without his permission, and he shrugs. “I can do his share of the work, if you want.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dustin says, settling back into his chair. “The interns have been slacking, anyway.”

Mark thinks about slacking, thinks about friendship and wonders, with an unknown stab of guilt, why he was nicer to Andrew then he ever was to Dustin, or Chris, or to Eduardo.

Especially to Eduardo.

“Um,” he’s not good at this, not good at reaching out. “Do you and Chris want to come over tonight? We can play Halo and stuff.”

Dustin grins up at him, unflappable, and nods, and Mark feels a surge of affection for him.

It’s so bizarre that he nods back and flees, not quite sure what to do with himself.

\---

Mark decides that being a good friend isn’t as hard as it sounds, because Chris and Dustin have stuck with him through a really fucked up time in his life, so they won’t leave anytime soon. This is comforting enough that he relaxes back into their routine of Halo, beer, and bad movies.

It reminds him of Kirkland, and he has to shove that out of his mind before he thinks of Eduardo.

(If he doesn’t, he ends up scowling into his drink and Dustin and Chris always leave him alone to brood.)

So they watch _The Terminator_ and make fun of Arnold’s accent, and life goes on.

 

The other shoe finally drops, two months later. Mark has been waiting for this, been waiting for Andrew’s wife – Carla – to finally die.

(He hadn’t been waiting _eagerly_ for her to die; he had been dreading it, unsure what to do.)

He doesn’t think Andrew is his friend now, or anything, but he feels a sense of obligation to him that goes beyond the usual employer/employee dynamic. Maybe Andrew feels this too, because Mark is invited to the funeral, which makes him panic and drag Dustin with him to Chris’s office.

“I just gave him time off, I don’t even _know_ her!” Mark tells them, pacing back and forth, left hand in his hoodie pocket and right hand hanging by his side. “Is this a really messed up way of saying ‘thank you?’ What do I do?!”

He rounds on Chris and Dustin, because they will know what to do, they always do, and scowls when Dustin chuckles at him.

“I think it’s a way for him to honor her memory,” Chris says diplomatically. “You made it possible for him to spend time with her, so he wants to invite you to her funeral.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Mark tells him. “‘Thanks Mark, couldn’t have tended to my dying wife without you. Please come to her funeral.’ I wouldn’t have _done_ anything if I knew this was going to happen.”

“You’re really upset over this,” Chris’s brow is furrowed, and he sounds puzzled. “I haven’t heard you talk this fast in a really long time.

It’s true; words are dropping from his tongue like bullets, tripping over themselves, but Mark doesn’t mean it to be cruel or unkind. He just doesn’t understand, and that frustrates him.

“I don’t like funerals,” he announces, and Dustin really does laugh.

“No one does,” he offers. “Be sure to wear black.”

 

The cemetery is ablaze with light, even though it’s overcast, and Mark wanders over to Carla’s funeral party, hands in his pockets and head bowed. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, has only the absent-minded pain that one feels when someone unknown dies to offer.

Even the small children are alight, glimmering mottled like bruises, and Mark focuses on them and waits for his eyes to adjust before screwing up his face to look at Andrew.

It’s stunning, the light flooding from him; it’s like he’s been opened up, like he’s a window that light is streaming into. Every part of him is lit up and Mark thinks that if he looks hard enough he’ll see every vein, every sinew.

It’s beautiful and it’s terrible; Mark locks his knees and stares, eyes watering, and thinks maybe pain feels like burning because Andrew is on fire.

 

Andrew thanks him, after the service has ended, shaking his hand and Mark nods and says things like _Take as much time as you need_ and _Insurance will cover grief counseling, if you need it._

(He has no idea if this is true, but he will _make_ it true.)

His tie is too tight, his jacket too small, and Mark feels smothered, like there’s a weight on his chest he can’t lift, a weight dragging him down with each gasp and swallow.

 

When he reaches his house he slumps against the wall in the dark, eyes still stinging from how bright the funeral was. He fumbles helplessly with his tie, scratching the back of his hand in his haste to get it off.

“Fuck,” he says, very quietly, to himself, and it echoes throughout his empty house.

He can still see Andrew, illuminated and ablaze, even when he closes his eyes, and he digs the heels of his palms into his eyes and tries to forget.

Instead he thinks of Eduardo, thinks of looking up into his eyes and seeing a creature of fire, of pain, looking back at him.

Mark can’t fathom what he’s feeling, can’t turn it into words or thoughts, so he sits on his floor and chokes on his own misery, unbuttoning his shirt hurriedly until he’s free, bare-chested in the gloom of his house.

His pants are next, and then he’s in boxers and socks, and the buzzing that was ugly and loud beneath his skin just…stops.

He’s so pale that he almost gleams in the darkness of his house, and it’s oddly peaceful, oddly comforting, that he can shine like everyone else, even if it’s not in the same way.


	3. Lacey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for: casual drug and alcohol use, self-harm, self-destructive behavior.  
> Thanks again to Rachel and Diana for the Spanish help!  
> Lacey’s face claim is Liliana Dominguez, who biracial (Half Mexican, Half European) supermodel.

Chris and Dustin find him like that, almost naked and slumped over, and he wakes up to Chris’s concerned face peering at him.

“Mark, are you okay?” Chris asks.

“Of course he’s not okay, he just went to the funeral,” Dustin interjects. He’s holding brown paper bag under one arm and Mark blinks up at him, dazed. “That’s why we’re here, Chris.”

“I still don’t think getting him crossfaded is a good idea,” Chris mutters, but Dustin ignores him, as does Mark, because getting crossfaded sounds like an _excellent_ idea.

 

Mark hasn’t been drunk in a long time; he favors having beer and feeling slightly flushed with alcohol rather than being so drunk he can’t type properly. But Dustin has tequila and they take turns taking shots, Mark digging out the shot glasses someone (he suspects Sean) had bought him as a house-warming gift.

He’s a light weight, has never been able to hold his liquor well and savor it like Chris and Eduardo have been able too, and soon he’s properly drunk, clinging onto Dustin’s arm and nodding earnestly at whatever Chris says.

Mark doesn’t think of himself as a self-destructive person, not like Sean, but he recognizes that he’ll regret this in the morning when he has a hangover and cotton mouth.

Funny, how he doesn’t care.

 

Dustin is busy packing with the bowl and when he goes to light it, he accidentally singes his thumb, because he’s really drunk, and instead of yelping he just giggles.

Mark, watching him, sees the spark of white light and thinks it looks different when he’s drunk; it’s softer, hazier. Easier to look at it.

 

(It will never stop being disturbing to him, that he can _see_ pain.)

 

They wander into his backyard, Mark in his boxers and socks, Chris and Dustin still fully dressed, and lay down on the grass. It’s almost pleasant, the coarseness of the brown summer grass beneath his skin, and he sprawls and stares up at the sky without really seeing it. Everything is spinning and Mark watches lazily and finds he doesn’t mind.

His mouth tastes bitter and he swallows with difficulty.

 _What if I told you I could see pain?_ He asks Chris and Dustin silently, staring up at the sky, tinged pink from light pollution. _What if I told you that I settled because Eduardo looked like the star Adhara from Canis Majoris?_

Instead he says, “I really fucked up.”

The words are heavy and his tongue fumbles around the shape of them. He stares up at the sky and thinks that it’s rushing down, that it’s about to fall on him, and feels his body twitch.

 

Chris and Dustin don’t say anything – maybe they’re unsure to react – and Mark clutches at the pipe in his hands, feeling the heat from the glass tickle his palms.

There’s not much to say, because they _know_ he fucked up and they _know_ he’s talking about Eduardo – who else would he be talking about? – so Mark lapses back into silence, lifting a hand to trace the Big Dipper with a thumb.

“Pass the pipe,” is all Chris says and Mark obeys, clumsy from being drunk and high, his hands shaking as he holds out the pipe to Chris.

 

Next to him, Dustin touches him lightly on the shoulder, like he understands.

He doesn’t, but Mark turns to look at him and blinks slowly, almost unable to focus, finally noting Dustin’s face is hazy with dull gold, the light fracturing into a million pieces like a stained glass window.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Dustin, concerned by the fractured halo around his head, and Dustin smiles lazily at him.

“I know you are.”

It’s a start.

\---  
Towards the end of August, Chris decides that Mark needs an assistant. He offers Mark fifteen different resumes and Mark ignores all of them, because he doesn’t _want_ an assistant, doesn’t want to let another person into his life.

It’s only when Andrew comes back into the office, his glow dim, that Mark gives into Chris’s harassment and looks over the candidates. He keeps only three resumes, making Chris roll his eyes and Dustin laugh, and sets up interviews.

Chris insists on attending, maybe to make sure Mark doesn’t offend someone.

 

(Mark isn’t really surprised and doesn’t bother to get insulted.)

 

It comes as a shock, however, when the Latina woman he saw at Stanford, the one with shining lines up and down her arms, walks into his office for an interview.

Mark spends most of the interview listening to her answer his questions and avoiding staring at her arms.

The light is muffled by her shirt and jacket but it’s _there_ just as Andrew’s grief is there, and Mark twitches, thinks about _invasion of privacy_ and decides Facebook is nothing when it comes to this.

But the girl – Lacey Morgan – is the best qualified and the least annoying, and she has a no-nonsense attitude around her that Chris says Mark needs.

(Mark suspects that this is because an assistant is almost like a nanny, and nannies are required to have that attitude.)

He doesn’t want this, doesn’t want to hire her, not because he doesn’t approve, or something, but because he’s uncomfortable.

Her pain, her scars, her cuts – those are private. Mark doesn’t deserve to see them. Mark doesn’t _want_ to see them.

\---

For the first few months or so, Mark is short with Lacey and she’s equally short with him; she gives as good as she gets and he admires that, sees similarities between them.

She’s stubborn, too; there’s always water and a piece of fruit waiting for him when he gets into the office, and she limits his red bull intake to two a day, no matter how angry he gets with her. Even what Dustin calls his lizard stare doesn’t phase her, and Mark remembers The Winklevii and Divya leaning away from him when he did it during the depositions.

Mark concludes that Lacey has a spine like iron, and leaves it at that.

It gets easier to ignore her scars, even though she’s always gleaming, even though he has to squint to look at her. She wears long sleeves and it doesn’t help; he suspects that even if she wore a full-length veil, he would still be able to see the glow of her wounds. It’s not just physical, it’s a deep dull ache, bronze-gold twining around the core of her and enveloping her in a caricature of a halo that Mark tries to avoid looking at.

What truly earns her his affection, however, is her assistance on attending fundraisers and other events like him – not to be his babysitter, but because “he doesn’t deserve to suffer that alone.”

 

“I don’t need a babysitter,” he tells her as they stand at the edge of the crowd at a fundraiser, Lacey radiant in a long sleeved red dress. Mark has already complimented her on it, noting it goes with her maple-syrup skin and long dark hair.

Lacey just grins at him.

“Think of me as a bodyguard,” she says. “When someone really stupid starts talking to you and you can’t take it anymore, I’ll rescue you.”

He can work with that and he says so, prompting her to bump her hip against his and laugh.

 

“I don’t know why these things exist, or why I’m invited,” Mark mutters to her later in the evening, when the event is winding down and he’s clutching a bottle of Blue Moon. They’re outside, having migrated to the terrace a while ago. “No one likes me.”

“Plenty of people like you,” Lacey corrects him. She’s holding a cigarette between two slender fingers, taking long pulls from it occasionally and exhaling smoke into the dark night air. “I like you.”

“Well then I guess I’m set,” Mark dead pans, and it’s worth it to see Lacey smile softly at him.

\---

It’s dangerous, Mark thinks, to grow fond of someone that is hurting so clearly.

(He thinks of Sean, who is a self-destructive man-whore and drug addict, and winces. He thinks of Eduardo, who never believed in himself and would curl inward if Mark so much as glared at him, and sighs. So maybe he surrounds himself with damaged people. What does that say about him?)

The worst part is that he can’t say anything, can’t approach Lacey and say _maybe you should get some help_ because, frankly, it’s none of his damn business.

But he becomes fond of Lacey, even openly affectionate, smiling at her when she comes in and no longer grumbling over the apples and string cheese left for him on his desk.

And it gets easier to ignore her scars, until it doesn’t.

 

He bumps into her when she comes out of the bathroom and she’s clutching her forearm with the opposite hand, bag slung over her shoulder.

Through her hand, Mark can see the sluggish pulsing and white light of an open wound, and he wraps an arm around her shoulders and steers her into his office.

They don’t talk; he directs her to sit in his chair and gets a band aid, rolls up her sleeve and presses Neosporin over the open wound, which is glowing brightly enough to obscure the angry red color of it.

It’s only after he smoothes the band aid over her arm – it doesn’t quite match her skin, which is slightly darker than Eduardo’s – that he rocks back on his heels and looks at her steadily.

“My cat scratched me,” Lacey tells him, but she’s not looking at him and he wraps two fingers around her chin and turns her head until he’s looking at her.

“Right,” he doesn’t argue, just agrees. “Maybe you should go see a therapist, for your cat.”

Lacey doesn’t say anything; her hand twitches, the white palm so much paler than the rest of her skin and Mark thinks she’s going to slap him. It gives him a weird sense of satisfaction; he’s good at being a dick, better at being an asshole than being a friend and he’s suddenly angry with her, angry for cutting herself in the bathroom at Facebook, at _his_ company. That’s not why the bathroom is there, that’s not why he hired her, that’s not OK with him.

She’s not OK and he’s scared; his fingers shake when he realizes this and he clutches at her sleeve.

 

“Insurance covers it,” Mark says, after a moment, because he will make sure it does. “For employees, I mean.”

“It won’t help,” Lacey tells him, trying to match him blow for blow, her words short and angry. “Thanks for the band aid.”

She doesn’t mean it.

\---

She avoids him after that, as much as his own personal assistant can, and Mark doesn’t blame her. He again lacks answers when Chris and Dustin ask him what he did wrong, and they shake their heads at him, mildly impressed that he managed to piss her off without even knowing how. Even Sean, who doesn’t really hang out in the office, notices Lacey’s coolness and asks if Mark had tried to hit on her.

“No,” Mark says, drawing the ‘o’ out. “Maybe she just needs some space.”

He doesn’t think that’s what it is – he thinks she’s afraid that he’ll rat her out.

 

(Mark has considered it.)

 

He lets this go on for two weeks, trying and failing not to miss her calm presence by his side, before he calls her into his office and draws the blinds.

“I’m not going to tell anyone about your… cat,” that’s really the only good word for it; ‘ _your secret habit of cutting yourself’_ just isn’t the right thing to say, somehow. “It’s not any of my business. I just – as your friend, not as your boss – I wish you would get help.”

She crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow at him and he raises an eyebrow right back, feeling his mouth harden into a thin line.

It’s Lacey that looks away first, and Mark secretly congratulates himself, because he doesn’t lose staring contests.

 

Things seem better after that, even though there’s a new cut on her arm, a new line of white light and Mark rubs his eyes tiredly.

He thinks back to when he had lain awake and contemplated what to do about Andrew, how he had come to the conclusion that he could help even if he couldn’t fix it.

But he can’t fix this it and he can’t even help it, has no idea what to do or say, because he’s never been good with _feelings_ , even if he’s some sort of an expert on pain.

And it’s not like he can ask Chris for advice.

He calls up his mother, mildly embarrassed he hadn’t thought of her sooner, and lets her explanation – _self-harm is a compulsion, and sometimes treated as an addiction. But it’s also very commonly a side effect of Borderline Personality Disorder. No, I can’t even speculate on what your mystery girl has, I haven’t met her and that wouldn’t be fair to her at all –_ wash over him.

What he gains from that conversation is the understanding that whatever Lacey is doing, it’s serious, and that Mark can help by ‘being there for her.’

He has no idea how to do that.

 

It’s usually the assistant that’s there for the boss, because that’s the entire point of the relationship. Mark doesn’t think he can go up to Lacey and say _I’m here for you –_ he remembers Eduardo saying that, the night he broke up with Erica, and something in his stomach lurches – in the Facebook offices. That would upset the balance of their working relationship.

(It’s thanks to Chris that he knows terms like ‘working relationship,’ that he even considers the ‘balance’ of such a thing.)

Mark concludes he should do this outside of the office, something he’s never done before – he’s never made the move to initiate a friendship out of the office.

He doesn’t think Andrew’s wife’s funeral counts.

So he asks Lacey to dinner, stressing that it’s _a friendly gesture_ , not a date, and she accepts, one eyebrow raised and mouth twisted like she’s not sure what the hell he’s doing.

He wishes he could say that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing either, but he’s _CEO, bitch_ ; why ruin that illusion?

Mark doesn’t like admitting weakness or ignorance, never has.

 

 Dinner is good; they go what Chris calls a ‘quaint’ French bistro and make small talk. Mark tries to avoid talking about work and Lacey follows suit, so they end up talking about college and holidays and culture, Lacey taking drags from her cigarette and Mark focusing on the dark red of her lips.

(Mark is Jewish but not religious; Lacey is half Mexican and half Dutch, and completely confused. It’s all very complicated.)

Mark picks up the check, because he’s a gentleman, and drives Lacey home.

It’s very date-like and he flushes and fumbles with the key in the ignition when they pull up in front of her apartment, because he can’t back out now.

“Lacey,” he says suddenly, as she’s about to get out of the car. She pauses, sits back in her seat and looks at him, brow furrowed. “I just…”

_Say it._

“I just want to let you know that I’m, um, here for you. Ok? With your… your cat, and stuff. If you ever need anything, I’m here.”

Silence grows thick and heavy between them and Mark stares down at his knees, knowing this will probably ruin the moment, but he can’t bring himself to make eye contact.

One of Lacey’s gentle hands cups his chin and he looks up at her. She’s almost fluorescent, glowing so brightly that he almost doesn’t realize what’s happening until her lips are on his.

 

It’s not romantic, it’s not sexy – she kisses him desperately, leaning over the gear shift and the parking brake, and Mark’s hands come up automatically to cup her face. He kisses her back, shutting his eyes against her brightness, and when he tries to draw away she shakes his head and clutches at his hair.

“No,” she orders. “I want this.”

He doesn’t, but he doesn’t _not_ want it, and maybe he’s a shitty friend but he agrees, parks his car and follows her into her apartment. She tastes like ash, like nicotine and wine and he thinks maybe they’re going to burn up, explode on first contact.

She tugs off his shirt as soon as they shut the door, hands roving over his bare skin, brushing his ribcage with her fingertips before gripping his hips. They keep kissing, even as she pulls him back, leading him down the hallway to her bedroom.

There he unzips her dress and she steps out of it, still wearing her pumps and her lacy black bra.

The only woman Mark has ever slept with is Erica, but he knows what to do; he suspects one of the reason she tolerated him for so long was because he was good at eating her out.

 

Lacey likes it rough and is ridiculous and responsive, moaning loudly when he tweaks a nipple through the lace of her bra. She busies herself with unzipping his pants and he trails a hand down her stomach, rubbing between her legs and she shakes and pants and pleads.

When they finally fall on the bed, Lacey naked and spread out under him, Mark lets her suck a hickey onto his neck while he uses one hand to play with her nipples and uses the other to rub her clit.

“Fuck,” she mutters when he kisses a line down her stomach, following the path his hand had traced only minutes before. “Fuck,” she says again, louder, when he spreads her and licks her open, sucking on her clit and thrusting his tongue into her until she’s shaking.

She pushes him away and sits up, tugging down his boxers; once his cock is free she lets the elastic go and it snaps against his ass, making his cock bob.

Lacey takes him in with a look and Mark flushes, because he knows he’s not impressive. He’s skinny and pale and has an average dick. If it wasn’t for his oral fixation he doubts he would have ever gotten to third base with Erica.

Lacey, however, just smiles at him, and her eyes are very dark.

She’s out of control, he thinks to himself as she rolls a condom onto him and he palms her breast; he can feel her heartbeat, feel how fast it is, and she’s glowing slightly when he thrusts into her.

He stops, doesn’t want her to hurt, but she grips his hips and rolls her hips, clearly wanting him to move, so he starts to fuck her, slow and gradual, and she grins crazily up at him.

“Pin me down, _gilipollas_ ,” she orders him and Mark obeys, runs his fingers over the scars on her forearms before pinning them to the bed with his palms. She doesn’t even struggle, just arches her back to meet him, body on display.

Mark looks down at her as he fucks her, notes the sweat beading in the valley between her breasts. There are old scars on the tops and sides of her thighs and burns on her stomach and he decides he doesn’t want to look at her anymore, doesn’t want to see what he isn’t meant too.

He lowers himself until he’s almost sprawled on top of her and kisses her messily; it’s all teeth and tongue, and she nips at his lip impatiently.

He manages to put a hand between them, presses down on her clit – she’s still wired from him eating her out – and she comes with a hiss, shuddering into silence.

When he comes, he’s acutely aware of the texture of her scars beneath his hands and her light imprinted onto his eyelids.

 

Afterwards, they lie in her bed in silence, Lacey throwing on slender leg over Mark and sighing noisily against his back.

He turns to look at her, blinking against the light that’s twining around her, thinks that he can almost _see_ the regret blossoming within her.

“Why do you do it?” He asks finally, taking one of her arms in his hands and holding it up, twisting it gently until her scars are visible. “Why does it help?”

Lacey lights a cigarette and thinks, but he knows that she’s relaxed enough, or fucked out enough, to answer, and he feels guilty, thinks maybe he’s taking advantage of her.

But then again, she used him – she had wanted a rough fuck and had interpreted his _I’m here for you_ as a willingness to fill that empty part within her. Mark doesn’t really regret this, doesn’t really feel anything except curiosity.

 

(The only regret he feels is that he didn’t take up Eduardo’s _I’m here for you_ the same way.)

 

“It helps,” she says finally, holding up both her arms and twisting them until they can clearly see her scars, pale white lines against the deeper mocha of her skin. “It’s like…I hurt,” she says finally, and she suddenly sounds so weary that even if Mark couldn’t see that for himself, he would believe her. “I hurt, and sometimes I think I’m going crazy because no one can tell but me, no one feels this but me and I’m all alone, and then I think that I’m making it all up, that I’m not really in pain.”

She sighs, drops her arms and they bounce slightly on the mattress. “Cutting…it’s like a visual reminder that I’m hurting, a reminder that it’s _real_.”

 

Mark is quiet for so long that Lacey shifts uncomfortably against him, taking a long drag from her cigarette and exhaling smoke all over him. When he does speak, he’s staring fixedly at the ceiling.

“What if I told you I could see pain?” He tries to keep his voice as neutral as possible, but Lacey stiffens against him.

(It’s only right, he thinks, that he tells her this instead of Dustin or Chris, because she’s trusted him with something secret and dark of hers, and he has to return the favor.)

“What if I told you that I saw pain as light, and that you were ablaze with it? That you’re always glowing because you’re always hurting?”

Lacey has turned to stare him, propping herself up on her elbows, and Mark winces when he realizes she’s fighting back tears.

Mark trails a hand down her side, stopping at her flank.

“It’s real,” he tells her. “You don’t need to cut to prove it to me.”

\---

He leaves later that night, because Lacey had retreated into herself, all dark eyes and sharp elbows, and Mark decides it’s a good idea to let her be.

The car ride is quiet, the skies tinged pink with light pollution and Mark doesn’t go back home, can’t bring himself to trap himself within sterile white walls and shitty furniture he bought at IKEA.

Instead he drives to a park, climbing out onto the hood of his car and stretching out, staring up at the stars and the sky and feeling the weight of it, the pressure, the immenseness.

 

Mark can remember, distinctly, wanting to _be_ something, to be _someone_ – and how long ago had that been? Three, four years ago?

He has always been certain that he would be someone, that he would become someone, but certainty didn’t help him; there was a mad desperation there, a scramble for acknowledgement, and now he’s CEO of Facebook and it’s never going to end.

He thinks about Lacey, illuminated beneath him; he thinks about Andrew, cleansed by his grief; he tries and fails not to think of Eduardo, brimming with light and staring at him from across the table.

“I don’t want this,” he says out loud, to no one and nothing, but it doesn’t change; he watches a satellite scoot across the sky, looks at the heavy moon.

He wonders what he’s talking about, if he’s talking about Facebook or his weird new ability.

Sometimes they seem like the same thing, honestly.

 

He folds a hand beneath his head and stretches the other one straight up, trying to trace out the shapes and folds of the constellations high above. He knows their stories, knows their significance but they seem foolish to him; how can a man do that, he wonders? How can a man read the stories written in the stars?

 

Chris used to warn him about _burning out_ , about doing too much in too little time, and Mark finds himself almost wanting that, because then maybe the lights will stop.

But he knows the physics and the science of it, knows that half the stars he’s looking at are already dead and their light is still finding him, bouncing off of his retinas and being reflected and flipped deep in his brain.

People are like that, maybe – he’s not sure. It’s a half formed theory in his mind, but he thinks all anyone wants is acknowledgement, is _validation_ – a word Chris uses a lot – of their pain, and it’s kind of like a radio signal looking for a receiver.

That sounds too much like Greek philosophy, like _friendship is two bodies and one soul_ , so Mark tries not to think, tries not to focus on anything but Lacey’s taste in his mouth and the cool metal of the car beneath him.

_\---_

He’s late to work next morning, stumbling in bleary eyed and zeroing in immediately on the new slash of light on Lacey’s clavicle – not a mark left by him but a new cut, and he gets up when she enters his office, fingers ghosting along the slash of light barely covered by her shirt.

Her face works, changes – grey eyes wide and mouth forming a shocked ‘o’ along with a gasp – and then she drops everything she’s holding and presses her hands over her mouth.

“ _Hijo de puta_ ,” Lacey says, and he knows what that means, but then: “It’s true,” she whispers, shaking, and he can barely hear the words, muffled by her fingers. “It’s true, you weren’t lying.”

They’re making a commotion so Mark wraps an arm around her shoulders and guides her into his office, shutting the door behind them.

“I don’t lie,” he tells her mildly, tugging her shirt way from her neck until he sees the line of the Band-Aid covering the cut. “I don’t understand the point of it.”

 

(Is this true? He can’t tell, because he never lied to Eduardo but he screwed him out of the company, kept that part from him – _a lie of omission_ – and Mark panics, shoves that thought away, wonders why the past keeps creeping out of it’s storage shed.)

 

She sits down, heavily, in his chair and he watches her, because she’s shaking and she’s shocked and he doesn’t really know what to do.

“You can see pain,” it’s like she wants him to repeat it, to affirm it, but he ducks his head.

“You don’t have a cat.” Is what he says instead and that makes her laugh, shaky, and she kicks him, the rounded toe of her flat glancing off his shin.

 

Mark tells her the entire story, or what he can tell her, talks about the headache and the dilution and how Eduardo’s skin was filled with sunlight. She listens and doesn’t judge him, just nods, sometimes clapping a hand over her mouth.

He thinks it goes well, though he knows from Chris that he’s a terrible judge of these things, but Lacey doesn’t seem to want to kill him or stab him or anything else, doesn’t seem to think he’s any crazier than she already thought.

It’s progress.

 

(He wonders when – _if_ – he will tell Chris and Dustin, wonders about their reactions.)

 

Afterwards they are inseparable, casually affectionate in a way that only Eduardo was with him; Lacey will wrap an arm around his shoulders or his waist, pressing her lips to his cheek and he will laugh and support her weight.

Sometimes he’ll come over to her house and they’ll watch a movie, or he’ll rub her feet, dig his thumbs into her arches and she’ll sigh and giggle against him, eyelids fluttering closed in bliss.

Dustin and Chris notice, because Mark is effectively splitting his time between Lacey, Facebook, and them, and they want to know if he’s sleeping with her – something that makes Chris scowl, because that’s _not good work behavior._

“No,” Mark reassures them and it’s true, because it only happened once and now they’re sort of stuck with each other, not lovers and not best friends but two people who are confused enough and fucked up enough to deserve each other. “We’re just friends.”

“Well bring her around, then,” Dustin prompts. “Two birds with one stone.”

So he does, and Dustin and Chris note the way that she sprawls half on top of him and how Mark actually tolerates it, but don’t notice what is so obvious to Mark – the way she glows, the shining lines on her arms and one on her clavicle and the hungry darkness of her eyes and mouth.

\---

“Do you love her?” Dustin asks one day, and Mark looks at him and frowns because he’s serious and Mark doesn’t really know, can’t think of an answer.

He’s bad at love, he knows that much, and he shrugs, but Dustin doesn’t leave so Mark thinks about it.

“Not in that way,” he says finally. He doesn’t have a name for what they are, half sister-brother and half best friends and half lovers – thirds, then, fine – and Dustin shrugs and nods.

 

But it comes up again, when Lacey’s sitting on his couch in one of his hoodies and her underwear, offering a shot to him with more grace than he is ever capable of when he’s drunk.

“I’m bad at love,” he tells her in the earnest, serious way only the very drunk have, and she blinks with difficulty and looks at him.

“The only person I really ever loved, I screwed out of the company. _Our_ company,” he emphasizes that, because it’s important, and Lacey looks hazy to him, rosy light and dark skin and a hungry mouth. “I didn’t…didn’t do it to hurt him,” he’s slurring and he can’t stop the words from coming out of his mouth. In a cool, rational part of his mind, Mark is horrified at what is happening but he has no control, his limbs are loose and everything is thick, like honey, like oil. “I did it for the company, y’know? But…people who love each other don’t, don’t hurt each other like that.”

“Oh, honey,” he hears Lacey say, but his hands don’t work and he drops the shot glass, hears it smash against the carpet and swears.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck.” He repeats and then Lacey is holding him, wrapping long arms around him and clutching him to her chest, so that his nose brushes the juncture of her shoulder and her neck and he gasps against her.

She rubs his back and Mark tries to relax against her but he’s wired, drunk enough that his limbs won’t obey his brain and he struggles at her, lungs burning and eyes wet, tongue thick and rebellious.

“Ssh, shh,” Lacey tells him, and he can smell her but not see her, he’s shutting his eyes tight against the burning behind them, and the darkness is cool, is welcome, is so rare.

 

Later, when he’s hung-over and clutching a mug of hot chocolate, Lacey sits across from him at his kitchen table and regards him with serious eyes. He watches her, thinks she’s beautiful despite her tangled hair and scars, and it’s almost enough to tempt a smile from him.

“Is that why you can see pain?” Mark appreciates her, appreciates that she doesn’t beat around the bush and he _knows_ what she’s talking about, knows that just as he knows she’s never giving back the hoodie she’s currently wearing.

“I think so,” he says, staring down at his hot chocolate.

“Okay.” she says, curling her legs up against her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

“Okay.” He says back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gilipollas - asshole  
> Hijo de puta - motherfucker/son of a bitch


	4. Sean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for: past sexual assault, drug addiction, self-destructive behavior, suicide.  
> thanks again to Rachel and Diana for the Spanish help. Bless you both <3
> 
> There are 640 acres in a square mile and Arches National Parks is a fuckton of acres which translates to like 119 miles so. Just. Go with it.  
> The freeway names are real.

“Do you think this happened to you for a reason?” Lacey asks him one day, when they’re at a café and she’s taking a drag from her cigarette.

He glances over at her, raises an eyebrow at the cardigan she’s wearing over her blue sundress even though it’s spring, and shrugs – a real shrug, not something false and irritating like he gave to the Winklevii so many years ago.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Do you think everything happens for a reason?”

Lacey purses her red lips and Mark watches her idly, thinks about those lips around his cock in a way that’s purely fantasy, not driven by want or need. They haven’t slept together since that first time and it’s better that way, but sometimes he’s desperate for human contact in a way he used to swear he would never be.

This time it’s Lacey’s turn to say “I don’t know,” careful, like she’s weighing her words. “That’s kind of a sucky sentiment. I’d rather there’s never a reason for anything painful to happen, because –” She shines, brighter than the gentle Spring sun and Mark squints at her.

“Because what if you deserved it?” He asks, half guessing and half saying it because that’s his secret fear too. “Otherwise it wouldn’t happen.”

“Yeah,” Lacey fidgets, clearly uncomfortable, and Mark stretches out a leg to poke her ankle with, trying to calm her down.

 

She has a point, and Mark thinks about it often, thinks that he sees pain for a reason and it’s probably to do with the fact that he’s an insensitive asshole – something that didn’t use to hurt but now sort of stings in a quiet way – and probably also related to what he did to Eduardo.

 

(He knows it’s tied up in Eduardo but doesn’t think it will end with Eduardo, and doesn’t bother to wonder if this would have happened if he hadn’t screwed Eduardo out of the company.)

 

It’s unpleasant, because the deeper Mark probes at himself, the more clearly he sees himself and he doesn’t like it. It’s a revelation to feel something he can only describe as self-loathing – a new feeling, something he’s never had time for and never allowed himself.

But he thinks maybe that’s why he and Lacey are such good friends, because she hates herself enough to doubt her own pain.

He has no idea why Chris and Dustin stick around, no idea why they tolerate him; he’s too afraid to ask.

And then there is Sean, who is what Mark does and doesn’t want to be; famous, but fucked up. Successful, but burned out. Intense, but an afterthought. Sean Parker, broke innovator.

It’s easy to blame Sean for what happened but Mark knows it’s not his fault, knows that Sean is half unaware of his own allure and half hyperaware of it, that he was genuinely trying to help out the company.

It was Mark’s fault, because Mark should have said no and Mark should have known better and Mark should have talked to Eduardo. But Mark was very bad at saying ‘no’ to Sean, especially when it came to Facebook, in those early days. He thinks the reason he and Sean – de facto best friends, maybe in name only – have drifted apart is because Mark is better at saying ‘no,’ because there’s a wedge there that can never go away.

But that’s unfair because the wedge is Mark’s fault and not Sean’s, and he needs to stop acting like it’s Sean’s.

 

(He knows that he wouldn’t know this, think this, process this if it wasn’t for the dull gold filling Sean so immensely that he’s shimmering, body full of bad memories and it’s enough to make Mark flinch away from him.)

 

Sean still owns 7% of the company – Mark remembers telling Marylin this – but isn’t directly involved, doesn’t hang around the offices and so the next time he’s in town, Mark asks to hang out, thinks that if he’s going to try and be a better person he can do it one step at a time, starting with the first half of the mess he’s responsible for.

 

( _All creation myths need a devil_ , he hears Marylin say.

 _I am the devil_.)

 

He doesn’t have this plan fully formed out, doesn’t really know _why_ he’s doing this, just know that he reaches out to Sean and Sean accepts, suggests they go clubbing and Mark agrees.

It’s loud and it’s dark and it’s disorienting; Mark is reminded of the first club Sean ever took him too, remembers Sean telling him about _guy just wanted to buy his wife a pair of thigh-highs_ and lets his eyes drift, trying not to focus on the flashes of light twining around every dancing body.

Sean has no trouble finding someone to dance with, to hook up with – he never has – but Mark sticks to the bar and sips his drink, something weird and bitter that Sean had ordered for him.

He wonders what it’s called, thinks they’ll probably have to take a taxi tonight of Sean doesn’t go home with someone – and then he ends up shrugging off someone who wants to tug him onto the dance floor.

 

Sean comes back after a while, sweaty and bright eyed and Mark smiles at him, and it’s genuine. Sean smiles back, full of bright and infectious energy and the glowing burn of him isn’t very bright, has been dulled by the dancing and the alcohol.

They stand by the bar and bob their heads to the music, because it’s too loud to talk and Sean’s good at just enjoying silence – something Mark enjoys about him.

He thinks that times like these are why he understands being friends with Sean, thinks that they work well together.

 

(Lacey once asked him if he was attracted to damaged people and he thinks he must be because there’s a certain level of carelessness that Sean has that only people who hurt have, and Sean has enough self-loathing for both of them, so maybe that’s another reason they work well together; it’s not like Mark can ask him.)

 

A man comes up to them, comes up to Sean, and he’s tall with thick eyebrows and one earring and a leer that says, quite clearly, what he wants to do with Sean – maybe even _to_ Sean – and Mark has seen that leer before, has seen Sean wear that leer, he is the _king_ of that leer.

But he’s never seen this, never seen Sean panic, never seen the light flex and change until it’s rosy like blood, staining his entire body and making him jerk back, making him glare at the guy and then – just, just _react._

Mark manages to get there after Sean throws the punch, and he’s not sure what just happened, not sure what words were said, he only knows that Sean is vibrating beneath his touch and his breath is coming in ragged gasps, and Mark drags him out of the club, makes sure the man doesn’t follow them.

When they’re on the street in the harsh light of the streetlamps and Sean is still shaking, Mark turns a scowl on him, wanting to ask what the fuck is wrong, but the words jam in his throat and he swallows, hard.

The bloody light is there, it’s there and it’s like Sean is dripping with it, like it’s escaping past his pores like sweat. He’s shaking, dragging a hand across his face and leaning against a wall and Mark just watches in silence, tries to deny any understanding, doesn’t want to know something that Sean hasn’t told him.

He knows Sean is going to go home and use tonight, is going to try and forget and Mark knows, like any non-addict, that using won’t help – but he doesn’t know what will, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“Let’s go home,” he suggests instead, and Sean nods, not looking at him; he’s fading rapidly, becoming Sean but _not_ Sean and Mark doesn’t really understand, just calls a cab and convinces Sean to get in using words and no touch.

They drop Sean off first and Mark stares out the window as the cab drives away, wonders how fucked up Sean will be and if this is his fault.

\---

In all honesty, Sean has done so many things that are – what were Sy’s exact words? – _legitimate grounds for termination_ that Mark is surprised he hasn’t fired him yet, hasn’t tried to dilute his shares like he did with Eduardo.

When Mark gets the call that Sean has been found in a park, passed out and on enough cocaine to be legally dead, he’s not surprised. He thinks that this is so much worse than ‘forced cannibalism’ on a chicken, remembers _it’s better to be accused of necrophilia_.

He still gets out, though, still drives to the hospital where Sean is being kept and sits there.

 

Chris comes, hovers outside the door until Mark goes to him and shrugs at his disapproving look.

“You should fire him,” Chris says without preamble, and Mark ushers him into the hall, in case Sean wakes up.

“This wasn’t random,” is all Mark says. “He did it for a reason.”

“I don’t care,” Chris says, even though Mark can see light flicker around his head – empathy – but Chris’s PR sensibilities win. “He needs to clean up or he needs to get out.”

“I’m working on it,” Mark says, even though it’s not true, and Chris squints at him suspiciously.

“Okay,” is all Chris says and Mark nods, pressing his lips together. He watches Chris leave and then wanders back into Sean’s room, uses his phone to do some research and stares over the brochures left strategically by the nurses.

 

Mark stays there until Sean wakes up and stares at him with hazy, panicked eyes.

“Hi,” Mark says, offering him a bottle of water. Sean is shaky and Mark doubts that the cocaine is fully out of his system, so he helps Sean hold the bottle up to his lips, helps him sip so he won’t spill it all over his hospital gown.

“Mark,” Sean says, fast. “Mark, what happened?”

“You passed out. The police found you and brought you here,” he doesn’t bother to elaborate, watches Sean’s eyes widen and sees him panic.

But he doesn’t give Sean a chance to say anything, just lays the two brochures he liked best on the bed, within Sean’s reach.

“Arizona or Utah?” He keeps his voice mild.

 

It’s not easy; Sean _knows_ he needs rehab and that makes it worse, in Mark’s opinion, because Sean slumps in defeat and Mark never wants to see him look like that, never wants to see the light bleed and collect in puddles in his head and in his chest. It’s enough to make him reach out, try to press a hand on Sean’s arm. He regrets it, when Sean shies away violently, and Mark feels his mouth twist, because _that was stupid_.

“Neither,” Sean tries for bravado and Mark presents him with his reptile face.

“Choose one,” Mark says, “or get out of the company.”

“You can’t –”

“I can.” It’s a low move, Mark knows that, and he’s not sure it’s legal but he holds Sean’s gaze with his own, tries to embody _I’m CEO, bitch_ , tries to believe that he can and will do this. “You are going to go to rehab and you are going to get better or I’m going to dump your ass on the side of the road and pray you don’t turn up dead. Now. Choose. Arizona, or Utah?”

\---

It doesn’t work like that, not right away – Mark leaves Sean with the two brochures and comes back to Sean having circled the Arizona one, which Mark had suspected would be the better fit.

 

(He doesn’t know Sean’s issues but he thinks he has a rough enough idea and it’s terrible to have it confirmed.)

 

Having a lot of money and an influential name is handy – Mark has thought this before and he’ll probably think it again – because the treatment center admits Sean in no time and then they’re off, Sean sweaty and pale in the passenger seat and Mark calm in the driver’s seat.

He offers Sean some sunglasses against the glare but doesn’t try to make small talk, tries to ignore the pulsing light echoing from Sean’s very core – it’s terrifying, and it’s enough to convince Mark he’s doing a twisted, manipulative, underhanded version of the right thing.

\---

Thirty minutes into the drive Sean shifts in his seat and turns to stare at Mark, who feels himself flush under the watery blue gaze.

“You were there, at the club,” it’s like an accusation and Mark nods after a minute, tries to act like he hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about what happened, like he hadn’t included it as a puzzle piece.

Sean doesn’t say anything, just hunches into himself and Mark tries not to think about words like _trauma_ and _past sexual assault_ , wonders if everyone can see that on Sean and that’s why the brochure for a place that specializes in sexual trauma victims with addictions appeared in his hospital room, or if it was just a coincidence.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Arizona,” he says instead, even though they’re still in California, even though Palo Alto is barely behind him. “It seems like a nice state.”

“Yeah,” Sean agrees.

 

Mark doesn’t know if Sean’s quiet because he’s scared or because he’s going through withdrawal, but he thinks the silence suits the desert, with the massive sky and the emptiness around them, the sage and the gorse and the slippery colors of orange-red-yellow-brown.

They have to stop for Sean to vomit and Mark stands over him while he heaves on his hands and knees, wants to place a hand on Sean’s back but doesn’t.

He stops having anything to throw up after the fourth time but his body keeps rebelling and Mark feels like a taskmaster, unyielding and unmoved by this, only convinced that Sean needs help and at least he’ll get it, even if this is a massive betrayal on all levels of friendship.

 

They drive into the night, Mark refusing to let Sean drive and stopping only at McDonalds to get them greasy food and milkshakes, something that Sean insists on and Mark doesn’t argue over, only says “Don’t throw up in the car.”

 

They stop at a motel off the highway, a small building made smaller by the big desert sky and the stars, bright in the night. Mark checks them in and guides Sean to their room – two twin beds, which makes Sean sigh and ask when he needed a babysitter, to which Mark just shrugs.

“Cheaper this way,” he says. Sean doesn’t call him on the lie.

Sean showers and Mark trusts him enough to let him do that, doesn’t think he’ll do anything stupid, and escapes outside, craning his neck to see the sky.

There’s no pink tinge of light pollution and the stars are brighter than he’s ever seen them, white-hot and distant, and he can’t quite wrap his mind around the fact that they’re dead, that they’re so far away.

Mark thinks it’s funny, because humans are so affected by the stars and the stars just…aren’t, are so far away and so unaffected by everything that it makes Mark sort of jealous, makes him want a heart that burns so cold and long that nothing hurts him.

He finds Adhara, bright as always, and thinks of Eduardo; traces _Canis Major_ with a stiff finger and is still staring at it when Sean comes out, wrapped in a fleece against the desert night, to find him.

“What are you doing?” Sean asks, and Mark thinks he’s probably not talking about the stargazing, thinks he’s talking about something bigger.

“Trying to be a better person,” he never thought he’d say that; it sounds really fucking _ironic_ , really _fake_ coming from him and he doesn’t have to look at Sean to see his face twist.

“By helping me?” Sean demands and Mark lifts his shoulders in a shrug, still staring at the sky.

“By helping people.” He corrects. “My friends. People who need help. People that I can help.”

“I’m still your friend.” Sean makes it a statement and not a question and Mark finally looks at him, thinks how similar they are, tries to cut off the thought before it progresses any further.

“Of course,” he says it like it’s simple, like it’s a fact – because he wants it to be. “If you want to be, after this.”

To his credit, Sean doesn’t ask any stupid questions like _what makes you think I need help,_ though Mark is asking himself _what makes you think you have the right to do this._

He’s not the best at decisions and has always told that voice _If I don’t do it, no one will_ and it’s usually true, but he still feels uneasy, still shifts uncomfortably when Sean looks at him sideways.

“You’ve been different. Since the depositions,” and there’s a lot he could say, could say _well what did you expect the depositions sucked_ and _I’m not allowed to legally talk about it_ but instead he nods.

“Why?” Sean says finally, and Mark looks down at the ground, drags his toe through the dirt and kicks at a pebble.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he says instead.

But that’s not true because if anyone would believe him, it’s Sean.

 

Later, in their uncomfortable twin beds with the scratchy sheets, Sean turns over to stare at Mark and Mark stares back, bleary eyed. He’s illuminated by that dark red light again and it’s frightening, like a horror movie, something that makes Mark curl his fingers around his pillow like it’s a weapon.

“What if this doesn’t work?” Sean whispers it and it’s something deep, a dark fear from the very core of him.

Mark doesn’t have words for him, doesn’t know how to comfort him in a way that will stick; he feels very far away from Sean, far away from everyone in the middle of the desert beneath an endless sky.

He thinks that this must be what loneliness feels like.

“Then we try again,” he says, and it’s quiet and hesitant. He wishes he could make it a bold declaration of fate, like the fake glowing lights on the radio that reads _2:01 AM._

\---

Sean can’t sleep and he wakes Mark up by sitting on the corner of his mattress and pressing a hand on the rough shape of Mark’s calf. It’s pointless to tell him to go back to sleep and Mark doesn’t know if this is Sean or if this is effects of the withdrawal, but Sean is wired and antsy and so they check out, leave the tiny room and the dingy motel behind and drive into the open desert.

 

The closer they get to the treatment center, the more nervous Sean gets, drumming his fingers on the dash and crossing his legs and scratching a week’s worth of stubble. Mark feels himself get stiller, colder, tenser; it’s like they’re polar opposites and Mark concentrates on driving, squinting against Sean’s flaring bright. Dawn is almost a relief because it’s a natural progression of things, the blue fading into pink and the pink brightening into lighter colors, a gradual illumination of the stark landscape around them.

Sean is working himself up; the light is pulsing steadily faster and he’s become very still, too still; Sean is always in motion and Mark is worried, now, that something is wrong.

He pulls off the road, feels the car bounce on the gravel and sees the dust flare up behind them in the rearview mirror.

“Is this the part where you dump me on the side of the road and hope I don’t end up dead?” Sean asks and Mark closes his eyes briefly, feels like he did when he made the crack about the chicken and Eduardo just watched him until he said, _I’m sorry, that was mean._

“Do you want it to be?” He asks instead of apologizing because he knows that if he backs down now, if he says _maybe that was a little harsh_ then Sean will take it and run with it.

 

“I don’t need to go to rehab.” Sean says it like it’s a fact and Mark sighs heavily and shuts off the car. It’s still early in the morning, stars mostly gone and the sun climbing the sky, and Mark thinks about turning around and driving home. He thinks about leaving Sean here, letting him figure out his own life.

He does neither.

“That’s bullshit,” he says instead. Maybe it’s a testament to how tired they both are, or to Mark’s _listen to me_ voice, but Sean doesn’t argue, just changes tactics.

“I don’t have to stay,” he and there’s an ugly glint in his eyes, a glint that Mark meets head on with his lips pressed together and an expression of forced patience on his face. “I still have my rights. I can check myself out of the treatment center.”

“Yes,” Mark agrees, “leave the one place that is really going to help you. Be my guest.”

“ _I don’t need help!”_ Sean shouts. The words reverberate in the enclosed space of the car, making Mark flinch away from the sounds, from the burst of light that spilled from Sean like a solar flare.

He thinks _I don’t need help_ means _nobody can help me_.

“Why do you use?” he asks instead, watches Sean get caught by surprise – something that happens so rarely that he can almost see the whirring gears in Sean’s head and the slow swooping curl in his stomach.

“To forget.” The words shatter between them, lying in pieces on the gearshift and Mark tries not to react, just fixes Sean with his stare.

“Same reason you sleep around?”

A nod.

“But it doesn’t work.”

“If you think rehab will fix it –” Sean explodes, so violent that Mark has to stop himself from leaning away, “then you’re wrong. They don’t – it will be worse, ok? They _make_ you remember.”

Mark shrugs before he can stop himself; he thinks about shoving away the memories of Eduardo’s wide eyes and anguished face, the way he smashed the laptop and then clenched his fists and said _You better lawyer up, asshole…I’m coming back for everything._ He thinks about how much he tries not to remember and knows that his memories are stronger because of this.

He knows he has no idea how to help Sean, knows Sean needs help, knows his memories of the most painful incident of his life are nothing compared to what Sean has inside his head.

“Sean, it’s not working,” Mark says finally. “The drugs, the sex, the alcohol – none of it works. I don’t… I don’t think anything will.”

It’s not fair to say _will you run away from it forever_ because he understands that urge, that need to cut something out of you so you don’t feel and you aren’t bothered by it.

 (He’s heard the robot jokes, okay. Sometimes he wishes they were true.)

 

 _“How do you know?”_ Sean spits out, shaking, and he’s ugly like this, face screwed up and tears leaking from his tired blue eyes, the light curling around his bones like something parasitic and diseased.

Mark looks at him and thinks about beauty, thinks about if you look at someone for long enough you can find beauty in them, in the panes of their face and the way everything fits together. But he thinks, too, that this isn’t the Sean he knows and yet, this is the embodiment of the Sean he knows; Sean’s being taken away from him by this sickness, but he’s still powerful and biting even when humbled and shaking from withdrawal.

“I can see pain,” Mark tells him flatly, and there’s no after-sex glow to ease the starkness of the words, the impossibility of them. “I can see your pain. It’s visible. Literally.”

Sean’s staring at him, incredulous and Mark thinks they’ve switched roles, because Mark’s selling him a twisted, incredible table and Sean is hungry for more, and it’s just like New York, all over again.

“It happened in the depositions. I had a headache and then I woke up and – Eduardo was glowing like a sun. Because of me.” Sean probably doesn’t need the clarification but it feels dishonest not to include it.

Mark swallows, looks away from Sean and stares out the dashboard. “I managed to figure it out, after… Emotional pain and physical pain look different, and remembered pain looks different from fresh pain.”

Sean isn’t saying anything but Mark can feel his eyes, can feel the weight of his gaze and swallows again, trying to relieve the dryness of his throat and the pressure behind his eyes.

“At first I tried to avoid it, tried to run away from it, but I couldn’t – so many people hurt, Sean. You would never know it from looking at them, you just think they wear sweaters cause they’re cold or sleep around because they like sex, but pain…It’s an epidemic.”

“What do you see when you look at me?” Sean interrupts and Mark is grateful for the interruption but hates the question, looks down at his lap before looking at Sean with wide, honest eyes.

“You’re lit up.” Mark whispers. “Everywhere.”

Sean is nodding, mouth pressed together, like he’s trying to cope, and Mark’s seen that expression on other people before – usually on Chris, when he’s fed up and about to break down.

Mark tries not to look away.

 

He doesn’t know how long they sit in the car, off the road, alone in the empty desert. Sean collects himself, taking deep breaths and rubbing his palms on his thighs, like he’s shuddering into acceptance, into resignation.

 “Okay,” Sean says finally, concentrating on not looking at Mark. “I’ll go. I’ll try.”

“Okay,” Mark says in return.

\---

When they say goodbye it’s awkward, because Sean rocks back and forth on the balls on his feet and Mark thinks about giving him a hug and decides against it.

They’re in the intro-room of the main building; Sean’s duffel is by his feet and staff are hovering nervously in the doorway.

“Be careful,” Sean says finally. “With… the being a good person thing.”

“Yeah,” Mark lets himself agree, thinks about how many people he loves and how they all hurt and wonders if he’s going to regret this, this falling in love and caring and becoming _emotionally invested._ “You, too.”

Sean nods, bites the inside of his lip and doesn’t look at Mark, focusing his blue eyes on Mark’s left shoulder and Mark is done.

“Try,” he orders. “Okay? Try, Sean. I want you to come back. I want you to be OK.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Sean whispers.

Mark doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to fix this, doesn’t know when he became someone who fixed things.

He thinks about Andrew and how insurance helped that, thinks that Lacey is getting better and all she needed from him was love; but he has no idea what to do, how to help Sean and it’s terrifying, to look at a problem and have no answers for it.

“Just try,” he says finally, voice choked and he swallows hard against the pressure behind his eyes. “Call me when you can or if you need anything.”

“Yeah,” Sean says, and then Mark nods to him and forces himself to turn around, to walk away.

\---

He gets back but doesn’t tell anyway, slumps in his empty house and stares at the wall, thinks about doubt.

It’s dark, in his house. He never turns on the lights, never wants to see anything more clearly.

Lacey and Dustin find him; they both have keys and they almost trip over Mark, who’s sprawled against a wall.

“Chris is on his way,” Dustin informs Mark, flexing his shoulder, while Lacey kneels down next to him, lays a hand on his arm and tries to get him to smile. Dustin heads into the kitchen, doubtless to start mixing drinks or to get a beer, and Mark blinks at Lacey, licks his lips to moisten them and tries to force words past the lump in his throat.

“Do you think I did the right thing?” he asks her; he feels 19 again, when the opinion of a pretty girl was all that mattered.

(But it’s different, so different, and he knows that.)

“Oh, _carino_ ,” she says, smiling soft and slow. “Yes, I do.”

It’s not enough and he looks away, remembers the panic in Sean’s eyes and the way he said _they’ll make it worse_ and then Lacey is saying, “You’re a good person, Mark.”

Mark remembers _you’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be._ He flushes, sags against the wall and doesn’t protest when Lacey hugs him, presses her lips to his cheek and mumbles nonsense into his skin until he hugs her back, fingers curling like claws around her arm and shoulders.

 

Chris shows up. By then Mark’s on the couch, slumped against the cushions. Dustin is on side of him and Lacey’s on the other, and they’re watching Lord of the Rings.

“You’re just in time for Aragorn,” Dustin announces when Chris walks in, making Chris grin tiredly.

“What, are sexy rangers your thing?” Lacey asks. Mark grins, thinks most people with a pulse and an interest in sex find Aragorn attractive. Chris just looks at her.

“Are they not yours?” He demands, incredulous, like it’s a problem if she says no.

Lacey flips him the bird, mumbles something about hobbits and Dustin makes a comment about Mark’s hair, about that’s why she must like him so much.

 

Lacey ends up sleeping over, curling up next to Mark on his enormous bed. He wakes up to her slow breathing, hair tangled down her shoulders and thinks that in another lifetime, he could have loved her like she deserves, like she needs.

It hurts to think that for no good reason at all and Mark is still staring at her when she wakes up.

“Do I have something on my face?” He shakes his head, doesn’t know how to say _you’re beautiful and I love you,_ and thinks he’s always been bad at saying things like that.

“Thanks,” he says instead. He can’t get the specific words past his throat, can’t thank her for sticking around and for being his friend and every single other stupid cheesy thought that he has now, but her eyes soften and she smiles drowsily at him.

“Of course.”

\---

Sean writes Mark letters and Mark can map his progress through the spacing of the letters and the zigzag of the lines, can see when Sean finally comes off of withdrawal and starts functioning like a normal human. His letters are inane; he complains about the food and the staff, talks about how there’s a no sex rule and doesn’t mention the specifics of treatment at all. Mark is grateful. He doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to bathe in Sean’s light even when he’s 700 miles away.

He still hasn’t told Dustin and Chris and wonders why, wonders if he’s still hoping it will go away or if he’s not supposed to tell them.

Sometimes, late at night, Mark concludes that there’s something bigger than him at work here, bigger in the sense of celestial bodies and the holy and divine, bigger in the way that he has been given a power he doesn’t deserve and the ability to help people, and he’s ill-suited for the job.

He thinks about letting people down, watches Andrew carefully from his office and counts Lacey’s scars whenever she’s not looking, Facebook stalks Chris’s current boyfriend and watches Dustin carefully.

He does not Facebook stalk Eduardo. He tries not to think about Eduardo. He leaves Eduardo alone, thinks if there’s anything Eduardo deserves, it’s peace.

It’s the least Mark can do to give that to him.

\---

One day, three weeks after Mark left Sean in Arizona, Lacey comes into work wearing a t-shirt.

Mark doesn’t try to hide the fact he’s staring and eventually Lacey stomps into his office and fixes him with a glare.

“I wear t-shirts,” she tells him.

“No you don’t,” he retorts. “Not with short sleeves. Not ever.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and leans a hip against the doorframe; Mark settles back in his chair and waits.

“My therapist told me I should start practicing self-acceptance, or something,” Lacey mumbles finally. “Shut up!” She adds, instantly, at Mark’s slow smile.

“How’s your cat?” He asks instead of making a stupid comment like _I’m proud of you_ and she flips him the bird.

“Better,” she says grudgingly. “Stop staring at me. It’s sexual harassment.”

“Right,” Mark says.

\---

When Chris’s boyfriend breaks up with him, Mark is the first to know – not because he is Facebook stalking their relationship, but because Chris walks past his office and is pulsing with a dull fluorescence that makes Mark get up and follow him into his office.

Chris looks up when Mark closes the door behind them and Mark puts his hands in his hoodie pockets and waits, because Chris is weird when it comes to friends-at-work and he doesn’t want to do anything wrong.

“What?” Chris asks finally.

“Are you going to be OK?” Mark asks.

It’s stupid because Chris hasn’t even changed his relationship status on Facebook yet and Mark doesn’t actually know what’s wrong, just knows there’s _something_ wrong and that’s enough to tip Chris off, for him to stare at Mark incredulously.

“How?” He manages the one word and Mark backs up a step, realizes he’s just outted himself to Chris and thinks _this is what you get for trying to be a good person._

He debates not answering but Chris is staring at him so fiercely that Mark cringes, manages: “If I explain you might as well invite Dustin in here too,” so they stand in silence while Chris texts Dustin, wait for him to arrive in a whirlwind of ginger hair and a smile.

“Hi! What are we meeting about?”

“Mark knew I was upset.” Chris announces. “ _Just by looking at me._ ”

Dustin gives Mark a half awed, half bemused expression and Mark thinks it will be good to get it all out on the table. But he can see Chris putting things together and waits, almost out of respect for Chris’s cognitive abilities.

“Does this have anything to do with how you knew that something was wrong with Andrew?” Chris demands.

 _Got in one, Christopher_ Mark thinks. Instead he says: “I can see pain. It appears as light.” and watches the incredulity fan out across their faces.

 “What the fuck,” Dustin says, calmly, and Mark feels his lips twist up and to the side. “What the _fuck_.” Dustin repeats.

“That’s not possible.” Chris says. Mark just looks at him. Since when has he ever cared about what was possible?

“Dustin hurt his shoulder in April,” Mark says instead. “He has three muscles knots – here, here, and here.” He demonstrates on himself, pressing where the bright bursts of light throb on Dustin’s body, wrapped inside of his sinews, and Dustin flinches like Mark has hurt him. “I think one of our interns has a broken toe because she’s stopped wearing heels and her toe is shining pretty constantly. I knew something was wrong with Andrew because he was glowing like a sun. And I know something shitty emotional just happened to you, Chris, because you’re pulsing and it’s bright.”

“I’m dreaming,” Dustin declares with the same feverish determination he uses in everything and Mark cracks a smile.

Chris, however, looks convinced.

“Devon and I broke up,” he says finally, slowly, and Dustin starts, stares at him. “Just now. I just got off the phone with him.” He looks at Mark. “How did – I walked past your office, and you saw me.”

“Yeah,” Mark says, dull.

“When did this start?” Chris demands.

“Wait. You actually _believe_ this?” Dustin says, before Mark can respond. “You believe that Mark has like, freaky superpowers?”  
“How else would he know all of this?”

For once ‘Facebook’ isn’t a good answer and Dustin stagnates, biting his lip and furrowing his brow as he considers it.

“It happened during the depositions,” Mark feels tired, wonders how many other people he’s going to tell and if anyone is ever going to believe him without a fuss. “I woke up from my headache and…” he makes a vague motion, gestures from his eyes to his head and Chris nods, slowly.

“Because of Eduardo.” Dustin says and Mark flinches, looks at him jerkily. Dustin seems convinced now, seems agreeable to the idea; he’s nodding like it makes sense.

“Yeah,” Mark admits finally. “Because of Eduardo.”

_It all comes back to Eduardo._

 

They get drunk at Chris’s place, after helping him pack up Devon’s stuff. Chris has a really nice stereo and a sectional couch instead of the regular one Mark has, so Dustin ends up sprawling on one end while Chris and Mark sit on the other.

“Devon’s a stupid name anyway,” Chris says finally. He’s still not slurring his words but Mark thinks that if he’s bad-mouthing his ex, he must be pretty drunk.

“Yeah,” Dustin agrees. “It’s a place they have sheep.”

“What?”

“Devon… wood? Devon… shire? Something English.”

“You don’t make any sense,” Chris complains.

“Whatever, Mark sees pain as light,” Dustin tells him, dragging out the r in _Mark_. “Don’t come crying to me.”

“Shut up,” Mark tells them both, without any heat. “It’s a secret.”

“Fucking Tony Stark,” Dustin mumbles, turning to lay on his side. “Stupid.”

“Yeah. Stupid.”

 

At breakfast, when they’re all hung over, Dustin throws an apple at Mark, who ducks, barely.

“What the fuck?” He demands. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Um,” because it’s early and he wants a burrito and his head really, really hurts. “Because you wouldn’t believe me?”

Chris looks stressed out. “Who else knows?” He demands. “God, if the press ever get wind of this…”

“Right, cause they’ll believe me,” Mark snaps.

“It’s a _huge_ invasion of privacy,” Chris says.

“Oh my god! It’s not part of Facebook, Jesus, _I didn’t ask for this.”_

“The irony,” Dustin mutters, staring pensively into his coffee.

“Lacey, Sean, and now you two,” Mark says after a minute. “They’re not going to tell anyone.”

“You told _Sean?_ ”

“Chris, this is my life. This isn’t the company. You don’t have any say in who I tell.” Mark’s tone goes hard before he can stop it and Chris looks hurt, for a moment – he gleams in Mark’s vision – and then nods.

“That’s fair.”

“I still can’t believe you didn’t tell us,” Dustin complains.

Mark gropes for the apple and throws it back at him. It ends up in the coffee, splashing Dustin’s face. Incredibly, Chris laughs.

 

\---

Mark gets the call on a sunny afternoon in June, when the days are getting long and sunshine is stretching lazy fingers into his office.

He picks up the phone – his cell phone – and answers it idly, murmuring _This is Mark Zuckerberg_ and waiting for the unknown number to become identified.

When they tell him why they’re calling, he drops the phone.

 

He doesn’t remember much, doesn’t know how Lacey finds him curled up on the floor with the phone in pieces next to him.

Everything is bright.

His ears are ringing.

Lacey doesn’t touch him. He remembers that.

 

Dustin drives him home; Mark curls into himself in the passenger seat and doesn’t talk, doesn’t look at anyone, pretends hard that they don’t exist. He can here snatches of conversation from Chris, on the phone with someone – the Arizona police department? – and angry in the backseat, and he tries not to listen.

They leave him alone at his house, something he knows, instinctively, is for his benefit and not theirs.

He leaves anyway, can’t stand being in his deserted, dark house, can’t stand looking at the couch and knowing Sean will never sit there again.

 

Mark can see it whenever he shuts his eyelids; not in full color, just in snatches of black and white.

A bullet, ripping through the skull. Blood, splattering on the floor. Sean, empty, falling to the ground.

The policemen finding him like that, sprawled on the carpet with his own blood and brains spread out around him like some sort of grisly offering.

\---

Mark drives.

He doesn’t tell anyone he’s leaving, doesn’t have a conscious plan; he gets into his car and stares blankly at the passenger seat, at the dashboard, sees Sean propping his feet up on the dash as they sped towards Arizona.

He thinks Arizona is somewhere he will never return to.

 

He takes CA 120-E, merges and avoids getting hit and tries to lose himself in driving, wishes it was a challenge, wishes he could distract himself.

He almost gets hit for that thought, has to pull over and stare at the speedometer until his heart stops beating against his ribs, until he can breathe normally again.

 

Mark heads East, cuts across California neatly, speeds past the Nevada border without pausing, thinks that if California is his and Arizona’s is Sean’s, he wants somewhere new, somewhere untainted.

His phone keeps ringing. He ignores it.

 

The desert is just as vast as he remembers it.

It’s bleak.

It’s empty.

Mark wants to lose himself in it and never be found.

 

He gets pulled over for speeding, just as he’s leaving Carson City.

The police officer has an impressive mustache and asks to see his license and registration, talks about how dangerous speeding is and then asks if Mark has a good reason for doing so.

“My best friend just blew his brains out,” Mark says without emotion or inflection, staring into the cop’s eyes.

He doesn’t get a ticket.

 

His thoughts come in stunted bursts, rushing past him so fast he doesn’t try to understand.

As night falls they grow more sluggish, heavier, until his head feels like lead and he is drooping, head bowed towards the steering wheel.

 

He gets a room in a motel and lies awake on the top of the itchy duvet cover, sees the glare of the radio-clock and does his best to think about nothing at all.

The room is dark besides the blue-green numbers on the radio, dark enough that Mark’s eyes have to adjust for him to see anything.

It’s not fair.

He wants to be on fire. He wants to be brimming with light. He wants to explode like a dying star.

He wants everyone to know.

\---

He finally stops hitting the ‘end’ button calls, takes Lacey’s call and listens to her cuss him out in three different languages before she demands to know where he is.

“Nevada.”

“Nevada! _¿Piensas que yendo al desierto vas a reparar algo? Joder_ , Mark, why?”

“The sky is big.”

“ _Estábamos muy preocupados por ti_ ,” she breathes out, and he doesn’t even know what that means. “Fuck. _Me cago en la puta que te parió._ Mark. You asshole.”

He concentrates on listening to her breathing, listens to it even out as she relaxes.

“When are you coming back?” He imagines her standing at her apartment, maybe at the sink, cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder.

“I don’t know.”

 

He loses track of time; he drives further East, imagines the confusing slant of Nevada on the map and decides to avoid Las Vegas.

It occurs to him that he’s running away. He ignores that.

\---

He’s in Utah when the news breaks; the newspapers proclaiming _Napster Founder Sean Parker found dead at age 28_ stare at him, almost accusingly.

Mark goes into a diner and watches everyone read the paper, looks for the small gleams of light that means they’re mourning him, that they’re sorry.

It’s not enough.

 

He goes back to his motel and sleeps, avoids getting up even when his phone reads _3:07 pm._

Time blurs together. Mark stares at the wall and sees nothing. Everything is heavy, is empty.

He curls his fingers around his own wrist, his pulse a surprise to him.

He thinks about luminosity.

 

When he checks out he imagines Sean’s feet on the dashboard again and the truth of it slams into him, makes him remember _Okay, I’ll try._

\---

He pulls over at Arches National Park, buys a sweatshirt and then drives through the scenic route, pulls over and watches the sun go down and the visitors filter out.

Without the sun it’s lonely and it’s dark.

Mark wanted this.

It doesn’t make sense to him anymore.

 

He’s trapped inside his own head, sitting on the hood of his car and staring up at the stars, at the dark arches, maybe the only person for a hundred square miles.

He wonders if this is how Sean felt, if this is how loneliness that drives someone to death feels.

 

The worst part, Mark admits to himself – it’s safe, everything suspended in motion by the darkness of the sky and the brightness of the stars – is that Sean was sober when he killed himself.

It’s his fault, Mark concludes, just as Eduardo’s pain was his fault – Sean had told Mark, told him clearly, _they only make it worse. They’ll make me remember._

But Mark hadn’t cared. Mark had been trying to help him, had bundled him off to a treatment center based on a brochure and said _try, I need you to be okay._

 

He knows, now, that _I don’t need help_ means _I don’t want help_.

 

He’s sorry, he realizes blankly. He’s sorry, because he should have known – if Sean was in that much pain when he was using, how was he supposed to deal with it sober?

 

It’s incomprehensible to him, to just _give up_ like that, but that’s not the word for it and it frustrates him because this is nothing he understands.

Sean hurt. Mark took away his coping methods. Sean killed himself.

_If a + b, then c._

Does this make it Mark’s fault?

 

Eduardo is Mark’s fault, except that Eduardo could have listened and Mark could have said what he meant and maybe it’s not just Mark’s fault.

But it was Mark’s fault, that Eduardo was in that much pain.

Sean’s pain wasn’t Mark’s fault, was something ugly and very old that Mark saw without wanting to.

He doesn’t understand.

 

He remembers talking to Lacey, remembers _do you believe everything happens for a reason_ and has an answer for her, because no, he doesn’t.

Because why would he be able to see pain, if not to help people?

 Helping people doesn’t mean killing them.

 

He’s still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Sean is dead.

 

“Why?” He asks out loud. “Why?”

Sean doesn’t answer.

 

He strips, without really thinking about it – it’s not a good idea, but suddenly he’s naked and there’s still an immense weight on his chest, forcing breath from his lungs.

It’s cold.

He shivers, stretches out on the cool metal of his car, splayed beneath the stars. The Milky Way spans the sky, bright enough to make Mark squint and crane his neck to take in every star, every burst of light, every ray that is travelling thousands and thousands of miles to slam into him.

He tries to soak them in.

 

It is only right, to him, that he be lit up brighter than anyone he’s ever seen, that his guilt and his shame and whatever else is roiling within him, hateful and terrifying, feed the fire, make him burn and glow until he’s the brightest thing in the sky.

He wants to be tied to the earth by light, wants to be held down by the force of his pain, wants everyone to see it.

He wants to be lit from within, golden through and through, even his eyelashes and curls gilded.

He wants everyone to know.

Sean is gone, and it is his fault.

 

It doesn’t work. Mark stays dark beneath the brightest stars he’s ever seen.

 

He drives out of the park, drives to the nearest town and gets a room at a motel, burrows beneath the blankets and tries not to shiver.

 

_He dreams of Sean; it’s a stupid dream and Mark is stupidly lucid, throws the radio at Sean and it passes right through him._

_“You’re an asshole,” he tells Sean and Sean grins at him, the same stupid charming grin._

_“Stop running away, Mark,” Sean tells him and this strikes Mark as ironic and unfair._

_“I was trying to help you.” He says instead, wants Sean to understand – and Sean smiles at him, soft._

_“You did.”_

_“You’re dead!” Mark is sitting up, clutching the sheets and staring at Sean. He’s crying, can feel the tears collect above his lips and roll down his cheeks. “That’s not – it didn’t work.”_

_“Mark, what do you see?”_

_It’s so eerily reminiscent of what Sean asked when Mark told him that he could see pain that Mark knows what Sean is talking about, squints and finally registers something._

_“Nothing. There’s no – no pain.”_

_“It’s the first time.” Sean sighs, wears a crooked smile that doesn’t fit Mark’s memories of him, but fits the reality all too well. “It’s what I wanted.”_

Mark wakes up and thinks about saying _it’s not what I wanted_ and can almost hear Sean saying _it’s my life._

He thinks, _not anymore_.

\---

He checks out of the motel, buckles his seat belt and stares down at the veins in his hands, how they pulse blue, eerie against his skin.

It doesn’t help.

He thinks about betrayal and the breath leaves his lungs; he sits gasping in an empty car, punched in the chest, blindsided.

He thinks, _so this is what it’s like_.

People have survived this.

(How?)

He’s inflicted it, before.

(A mistake.)

It doesn’t help.

He turns the car west.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> carino - darling  
> ¿Piensas que yendo al desierto vas a reparar algo? - you think going into the desert will help?  
> Joder - fuck  
> Estábamos muy preocupados por ti - we were all so worried about you  
> Me cago en la puta que te parió - I shit on the mother that birthed you (this is the insult of all insults, apparently)


	5. Eduardo

_“In this world  
love has no color_

  
_yet how deeply_   
_my body_   
_is stained by yours.”_

— Izumi Shikibu

Facebook is subdued. Chris proposes hiring grief counselors and Mark agrees, has it arranged but refuses to make a press release. He doesn’t want Sean’s death to be tainted by publicity, doesn’t want this to turn into something about fame and fortune rather than the tragedy it is.

He does urge Chris to push the tox-screen, wants everyone to know that Sean wasn’t high when he did this.

 

It’s weird, because navigating Facebook after Sean’s suicide is eerily like navigating Facebook after the dilutions, after Eduardo told him to _lawyer up, asshole_. He codes and thinks about change and how he doesn’t like it; Lacey points out that he changes Facebook far too often for that to be true.

He doesn’t notice or remember much of Facebook after the dilutions and the same goes here, knows that he wires in more and talks less, avoids looking at himself in the mirror and can taste his own breath, his own filth, whenever he opens his eyes and wonders why he woke up again.

Dustin clings to him, makes Mark feel guilty about leaving for his impromptu road trip, knows that Dustin is used to people leaving.

It’s made worse when Chris takes Mark aside and tells him he’s leaving towards the end of July to work on the Obama campaign.

Mark doesn’t know what to say, is torn between _please don’t leave_ and _I’m happy for you_ , decides to go with the latter and plasters a smile onto his face.

Chris isn’t fooled.

 

Eduardo begins to call.

Lacey pops into Mark’s office and tells him Eduardo is on line two, and he stares at her, thinks about the grim, hurting Eduardo from the depositions and refuses to take the call.

He calls everyday. Once Mark catches Lacey on the phone with him, explaining carefully that Mark is busy and will call him back eventually. Mark wonders if Eduardo has gotten any better at catching a lie. He hopes so.

 

“He’s worried about you,” Lacey will tell Mark, and he’ll nod noncommittally. He doesn’t see why Eduardo is worried about him, thinks he lost the right to have Eduardo’s concern when he screwed Eduardo out of the company, and tells Lacey as much. She rubs his arm.

Lacey sleeps over more often than not, to the point that Mark asks her why she doesn’t just move in. They’re still doing their weird relationship, not sleeping together but more than friends, and Mark’s favorite thing is to watch her sleep, watch her face relax into serenity.

There’s a new cut on her fore-arm, a cut that wasn’t there before he left but he doesn’t say anything, decides it’s not any of his business. He’s done interfering with people’s lives.

Sometimes he clings to Lacey, curls around her and wonders why he won’t cry, feels the burning behind his eyes and waits for tears that don’t come.

He thinks it has to do with anger.

He wonders if everyone reacts this way.

\---

He attends Sean’s funeral, is glad it’s a closed-casket ceremony, and avoids Sean’s family.

They find him anyway; his mother hugs Mark and he hugs her back, too surprised to do anything about it.

“Thank you for helping my boy,” she tells him tearfully.

He’s not fast enough to prevent himself from saying what he really thinks. “I didn’t.”

“You tried,” she corrects him. “That’s all you can do.”

\---

Mark doesn’t get drunk after the funeral, thinks it’s a dishonor to Sean’s memory. Instead he sits in his house and thinks about light.

“What’s the point of this?” he says out loud. No one answers. His house is dark and empty.

He thinks about the depositions, thinks about change and wonders if this has, at least, made him a better person.

He wonders when he became the kind of person that thinks about becoming a better person.

He thinks about Eduardo, thinks about him lit up across the depositions table, and swallows.

 

He fucked up, with Eduardo – but he fucked up more when he tried to apologize. Mark knows that know, thinks Eduardo is the exception to the rule, remembers thinking _maybe all anyone wants is to have their pain validated_ but the way he apologized to Eduardo made it seem like it was Eduardo’s fault for getting hurt, and that’s not what Mark meant.

It seems very important – crucial, even – to tell Eduardo this, to fix it.

(He wants to fix something, wants to prove he’s not a shitty friend and a failure of a human being, because Facebook isn’t enough right now.)

The thing is, he can’t.

Eduardo is still calling everyday, and sometimes Mark will pick up the phone while he’s talking to Lacey and just listen to him, noting that Eduardo’s voice hasn’t really changed and he sounds – resigned. Mark doesn’t know why he keeps calling.

Mark still can’t bring himself to say anything. He doesn’t want Eduardo to be calling to gloat or to offer false condolences. He doesn’t want to give Eduardo a reason to leave again.

 

Exhaustion settles over Mark, blanketing him so thickly that it’s hard to move, hard to get up in the morning. Lacey will lie there with him and they will stare at the ceiling in silence, Mark’s throat working as he tries to speak, tries to articulate the emptiness that is blooming slowly inside of him, and Lacey places a palm on his chest and watches it rise and fall with his breathing.

He can barely get out of bed some days, can barely run his company – he knows about exhaustion, about powering through it but his will to do so is sapped; he stares blankly at his computer screen and is grateful that he doesn’t really code very much anymore, something he has spent an enormous amount of time cursing.

He has no idea how to approach Eduardo, how to apologize to him, how to pick up the phone and _talk_ to him. It’s a massive, looming mistake that he has no idea how to fix, a hole he can’t patch and he avoids it, his stomach leaden whenever he thinks of it, of Eduardo’s hard eyes and broken looking smile.

Chris takes him aside one day, asks if he’s talked to anyone and Mark shakes his head, continues to do so when Chris asks if he _wants_ to talk to anyone.

“It might help you, Mark,” Chris says finally, respectfully, tactful.

“I can’t…” How can he explain it all, the guilt, the light, the pain? He can’t. Not to a total stranger. He can barely force words out around his friends.

 

Chris calls Mark’s mom for him, hands him the phone and shuts him in his office. Mark listens to his mother talk, soothed by the inaneness of her chatter and focuses on breathing, has no idea how to begin to open up the tangled knot at the base of his throat.

“Sweetie,” his mother says after a moment. He doesn’t even have to say anything. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Mark thinks, again, about betrayal and the fullness of Eduardo’s smile, thinks about the hard glint in Sean’s eyes, and swallows.

“I made him go to treatment.”

“You didn’t make him pull the trigger.” She pauses and he listens to her breathing, shuts his eyes and pretends she’s right next to him.

He feels distance more keenly than ever before, feels the inadequacies of digital communication catching up with him. “You can offer people help, Mark. You can give them the tools they need to help themselves. But you can fix them. They have to do that, and they have to want too.”

Mark digests this for a minute. Then: “I miss him.”

“Oh, sweetie.” She says. “I know.”

\---

It helps a little, doesn’t fix anything; Mark looks for Sean around the office, stares at people with dirty blond curls and snub noses like he’s trying to assemble all of the different pieces into a cohesive whole. He’s done this before, has a radar for slick backed hair and dark, mournful eyes but it’s more powerful this time, possibly because he knows that Sean’s demise included the scattering of himself around a cheap motel room.

He avoids the people that glow, takes to retreating inside of himself if he’s around one, takes to even avoiding Lacey – he doesn’t want to touch her, doesn’t want to corrode the little progress there is, but she notices and clings tightly to him one night, sobs working their way out of her.

“The thing about you, Mark, is that you see pain but you don’t flee from it. Do you know how rare that is?”

He turns on his back and regards the ceiling, feels her grey eyes on him, feels the accusation heavy in her words.

“Most people…” she chokes, clears her throat, “they want the best of you, only the best and when you try to show them something ugly or something painful, something that means a lot and has cost a lot, they don’t want to see it. But you…you plunge head first into that, you don’t back away and it’s almost like it doesn’t matter, it’s just a part of us.”

But he hasn’t been doing that lately, and he knows that, knows that is the point of this little speech. He forces himself to look at her, sees she’s crying like she doesn’t even feel it.

“There’s a difference between avoiding pain for self-preservation and because you’re afraid of it,” Lacey concludes finally, in a whisper. Mark blinks, swallows with difficulty, doesn’t know what to do with his body, his hands, his breath.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers finally and he feels like all he’s doing is apologizing but he never does it right. Lacey shakes her head.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she’s talking about Sean but Mark cannot help but lump everything together, can’t help but look at the chain of events starting with Erica and ending with Sean dead in Arizona and thinks, _yes_ , _yes it was._

\---

Lacey tells Mark that Eduardo has asked for his cell phone number and so he’s not surprised when Eduardo takes to calling him there instead, lighting up his phone and making it buzz twice a day. Mark ignores these calls, watches them go to voicemail and listens to Eduardo’s small talky messages.

He doesn’t call him back.

Then, history repeats itself almost without Mark noticing; he is standing next to wall at a fundraiser and something makes him look up from his shoes. Someone is watching him, the light of them fluctuating and Mark makes eye contact with Eduardo. Eduardo, who downs his drink in one gulp before heading over to Mark, just like he did Mark’s freshmen year, just like he did in the beginning.

Mark feels something within him crack, that Eduardo would just approach him, that Eduardo _is_ approaching him even after he’s ignored Eduardo for so long, and his breath stutters.

Eduardo halts next to him, facing him, face set in an expression that is so different from his usual forced casualness that it takes Mark a moment to realize it’s concern.

“Mark?”

“Hi,” Mark says, stupidly, blinks and looks away and berates himself for the stupidity of that comment; his hands flutter by his sides and then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Eduardo’s face twist into a smile.

“Mark.” Eduardo says, like it’s an affirmation.

“Yes.” Mark agrees with him, sneaks a look at him.

He doesn’t know what to say. It’s clear Eduardo doesn’t either. He goes to take a drink but it’s empty and Mark smiles to himself, tries to hide it so Eduardo doesn’t think it’s out of malice.

“You aren’t returning my calls.” Eduardo says finally and Mark wants to know if it’s because he cares or if it’s because he feels obligated to be affronted

“No,” Mark says without really thinking about it. “I’m not.”

Eduardo takes this in stride; he nods. “I’m worried about you.” Is all he says.

 

Mark looks at him, really looks at him and tries not to focus on the light twining around Eduardo, the light that seems to be constant whenever he’s around Mark; Mark tries not to take it personally but knows it is personal, knows there are things that can never be fixed, a distance that can never be bridged no matter how hard he tries.

Eduardo catches him looking and looks back and Mark shuts his eyes and looks away, breath hitching.

“I’m sorry,” it bursts out of him and this is neither the time or the place. Eduardo freezes, eyes as dark as Mark has ever seen them. Mark swallows, forces himself to continue, forces himself to meet Eduardo’s gaze. “I’m sorry for hurting you, Wardo. I’m sorry that I did that too you. I’m sorry that I can’t fix this.”

“Fix this?” Eduardo repeats.

Mark nods. “This – what happened. I hurt you.”

“Are you just realizing this now?” Is what Eduardo demands and Mark shuts his eyes for a fraction of the second, feels like he is running, his pulse thundering in his ears, heartbeat frantic like a hummingbird.

“No,” he admits. “I’ve – I’ve always known.”

 

There’s nothing to say to that. Eduardo looks angry, like he wants to bare his teeth but instead his grip on his empty glass is white knuckled and he forces a nod. Mark wonders why and how he always manages to screw things up, especially when he’s only trying to fix them.

“I’m sorry about Sean,” Eduardo says finally, and here it is – the end, again.

“Is that – is that why you’re talking to me? Because you don’t have to, I mean, it wasn’t your fault.”

Eduardo cocks his head to the side. “No,” he says slowly, “That’s not why – I’m not going to start talking to you again just because Sean is dead –”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mark says hurriedly,  
“– and Sean’s death was no one’s fault but Sean’s,” Eduardo finishes, slow, brow furrowed. Mark wants to palm the wrinkles of his forehead, wants to smooth them away. “You know that.” It’s a statement and Mark wishes it were true.

“Mark? Have you talked to anyone since –”

“I talked to my mom. She’s a psychologist.”

“I know, I remember.” Eduardo shrugs and Mark stares at him because of course he remembers, he’s Eduardo. Mark can’t even remember Eduardo’s mother’s name, let alone her job.

Eduardo checks his watch. It’s late enough that the party is winding down, late enough for it to be acceptable to leave. “I have an early flight,” he says, like an excuse.

Mark shrugs. “Yeah.” Eduardo doesn’t have to justify himself; he wants to shake Eduardo’s shoulders and tell him that.

He watches Eduardo leave, watches Eduardo pause and turn around, eyes calculating and brow furrowed.

“Mark?” Everything stops, slides into focus and crystalizes and Mark focuses on him, hungry for whatever offering this could be. “You can’t fix this if you don’t try.”

\---

Mark thinks about that for three days, plays the words on loop and watches them float across his mind’s eye over and over and over again. Dustin and Chris are leaving him alone, though he sees them trade anxious glances – they must know he and Wardo talked – and even Lacey gives him space. He’s too distracted to be irritated, doesn’t think that interacting with his once-best friend calls for his friends to treat him like something breakable.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing and never has, muddled through it and managed to scrap success together with Andrew, managed to assist Lacey and – well, there’s Sean, and Mark shies away from considering that all together.

He’s bad at this. He’s better than he was, better with people and feelings, but that’s with a select few. Eduardo is, and always has been, a wildcard.

Ordinarily this is where Mark would ask for advice, because stuff like this scares him and he thinks it’s better to ask Chris what to do then fuck it up himself, but this…it’s private. It would be like letting Eduardo down, if Mark got advice from someone else.

On the third day he finally picks up the phone and presses ‘answer’ on Eduardo’s call, says without pre-amble:

[_“_ I don’t know how.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/8fe765c40ddc2c9183667c9acd2c342a/tumblr_mp5f5872ch1rjcf10o1_r4_500.png)

[He can hear Eduardo’s sharp intake of breath and wonders about all the emotions in that breath, wonders if he’ll ever be able to understand them again.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/8fe765c40ddc2c9183667c9acd2c342a/tumblr_mp5f5872ch1rjcf10o1_r4_500.png)

[_“_ Don’t know how to what?” Eduardo asks, and Mark – Mark hears but doesn’t understand, doesn’t know how to force out the words.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/8fe765c40ddc2c9183667c9acd2c342a/tumblr_mp5f5872ch1rjcf10o1_r4_500.png)

[Eduardo says, _“_ How to fix it, or how to try?”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/8fe765c40ddc2c9183667c9acd2c342a/tumblr_mp5f5872ch1rjcf10o1_r4_500.png)

[_“_ Both.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/8fe765c40ddc2c9183667c9acd2c342a/tumblr_mp5f5872ch1rjcf10o1_r4_500.png)

Eduardo doesn’t reply and Mark drums his fingers on his desk, tries to fit the nervous pacing of his heart into the staccato of his fingers.

 “Picking up the phone seems a lot like trying.” Eduardo says drily, and Mark wonders what time it is in Singapore and why Eduardo sounds more amused than irritated, thinks maybe his voice has deepened.

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to try, I just said I didn’t know how.”

“Congratulations, you’re trying.”

Mark doesn’t say anything, listens to Eduardo breathe on the other end, listens to him swallow.

“Why are you trying?” He can hear the nervousness in Eduardo’s voice and Mark thinks about saying ‘because you told me to’ and ‘because it’s the right thing to do.’

“Because you’re important to me,” he says instead, surprising himself with his honesty.

Eduardo inhales sharply. Mark bites his lip.

“I don’t know how to feel about that,” Eduardo tells him slowly. “I don’t know if I believe you.”

“Okay,” because that’s fair, even if it hurts and Mark nods even though Eduardo can’t see him.

“What changed?” Eduardo asks. Mark can _hear_ the bitterness in Eduardo’s voice, the hesitation, and wonders how to explain everything over the phone.

“Everything,” it’s the truth, at least, but without any substance.

“Including you?”

“Mostly me,” it doesn’t hurt to admit, because maybe it’s true. “Things are…things are different now.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure.” _Because of you_. That’s his present theory, anyway. “The depositions were definitely a wake up call.” He wonders if Eduardo heard what he didn’t say.

A sigh. Mark sighs with him, breathes deep and pretends Eduardo is here with him, is next to him.

“Have you had anymore headaches?” Mark can’t figure out what Eduardo is talking about and then remembers how it all started, how he passed out and woke up with his head in his lap and Eduardo’s light shining through his eyelids.

“No. It was a one time thing.” Mark pauses, again – this entire conversation seems more like the sharing of breath than the sharing of words. “Thank you for being there. When it happened.”

Eduardo sounds surprised. “You’re welcome.”

 

They say goodbye and Mark puts the phone down and stares at it.

He wonders if that’s the first time he’s thanked Eduardo. It probably is.

He remembers the algorithm, remembers _I need you, I’m here for you, no I meant I need the algorithm you used to rank chess players._

Did he ever thank Eduardo for that? For starting it all?

Does Eduardo think back and regret that moment? Does he remember it at all? Or has he moved on?  
Mark doesn’t know what to think.

 

Lacey comes in a few minutes later and leans her hip against the doorframe. Mark raises an eyebrow at her.

“You answered his call,” she says, and Mark realizes that of course she knows, she’s been waiting for this to happen.

“Yes,” he agrees. Her eyes flare with annoyance. Mark presents her with a blank face, knowing what she wants but refusing to give it to her.

“Well?!” She finally explodes. “Was that – was it good?”

“Yes,” Mark admits. Lacey beams at him. Mark gives in and smiles back. “Yes,” he says again. “It was.”

 

When Chris and Dustin corner him a few hours later, Mark wonders if Lacey told them or if they just have superpowers of their own.

“You and Wardo are talking again?!” Dustin demands, excited like a rat terrier and Mark sighs to himself.

“Mark, are you ok?” Chris is concerned, not excited, and Mark thinks that if he was sane then he’d also be concerned, that he’d be nervous about this.

“I’m fine. I…we’re talking. I’m trying to fix it.”

“Um,” Dustin says slowly, “I don’t think you can fix something that already happened…?” He trails off.

“Fix us,” Mark clarifies. “Not the lawsuit.”

Chris is giving him a ‘I’m proud of you’ look and Mark shrugs.

“It’s new,” he says after a minute. “It’s…I don’t really want to talk about it, not yet.”

“Okay,” Chris and Dustin say together.

“But we’re here when you do want to talk,” Chris says. Dustin nods.

Mark smiles at them before escaping.

On his drive home he wonders what Sean would think about him and Eduardo talking again.

Somehow this doesn’t dampen his mood.

\---

The thing about grief is it’s funny; it’s pervasive and it’s sly, and Mark can almost see it change him, notices how tightly controlled he is. It takes effort to relax enough to joke or smile, effort that is physical, which leaves him with sore muscles and a headache.

Chris is getting ready to leave, and that hurts – Mark doesn’t know what to do or say, but one day he sits down on the couch on Chris’s office and refuses to leave, even when Chris barks at him that he needs to get lunch or take a walk or something.

Eventually Chris comes and sits next to him, huffing a sigh that stirs Mark’s curls.

Silence builds slowly, and Mark stops typing, shuts his laptop and looks straight ahead of him. He knows Chris is looking at him, can feel Chris’s eyes on his face, but doesn’t know what to do, what to say.

“I’m sorry.” Chris says finally and Mark nods, but wonders – for what? For Sean? For leaving? For the depositions? For life?

Chris doesn’t clarify.

“Me too,” because he is, and they sit like that for a long while, the fluorescent light buzzing above them.

 

Mark avoids the office, avoids the empty room that was once lit up by Sean’s presence. He spends time at home, instead, sitting with both feet in his pool and a beer in hand.

It’s lonely.

Days bleed into nights and Mark loses track, doesn’t really have a routine. He takes to walking around Palo Alto, wanders the Stanford Campus like he did almost a year ago, takes his wallet and his keys and puts on proper shoes. That’s it.

Sometimes he walks until it’s very late, but he can’t see the stars, only a dull yellow mass of light pollution.

Sometimes he drives until he can look out the window and see the stars, and then he pulls over and gets out, stands against his car and looks up until his neck hurts.

When Chris finds out about his late night jaunts, he threatens to set Mark up with a bodyguard unless Mark stops. Mark has no intention of stopping; these small journeys are the only things that make the buzzing beneath his skin stop.

One night he dives into his pool in only his boxers, feels the cold of the water slap him and feels the grogginess in his head fall away.

It’s dark, dark enough that he can’t see very well; his house is dark, the sky is dark, the neighborhood is dark.

The water shushes against the sides of the pool. Mark sinks down until he’s submerged, squeezes his eyes shut, and tries not to hear anything at all.

\---

He and Eduardo are talking everyday. They don’t talk about the past, because Mark doesn’t know how and Eduardo doesn’t bring it up, and they don’t talk about Facebook, because Eduardo doesn’t ask and Mark is convinced that will make him stop talking to Mark. So they talk about current events. Their lives. The fact Eduardo is thinking about giving up his citizenship. The fact he’ll be in town for Chris’s going away party.

(Mark doesn’t know how to feel about any of it.)

Eduardo will ask, every third conversation, how Mark is doing and Mark will try to be honest without being morbid: “I’m OK.” Or “I’m sad.” Or, once, when he was particularly upset, “Why do you care?”

(Eduardo had gone quiet and Mark had apologized and haltingly, timidly, explained that he’s unsure why Eduardo is talking to him, after everything he did.)

Mark has taken to returning the question and learns that Eduardo jogs now, and wants to get a dog, and Mark mentions that he also wants to get a dog, and they exchange emails about dogs and dog breeds and dog toys for the next week and a half.

Eduardo asks, one day, “Are you sad that Chris is leaving?”

“Yes,” Mark says without hesitation.

Eduardo is quiet and Mark wonders what he said wrong.

Then: “Pick me up from the airport?”

“Okay,” Mark agrees, and Eduardo forwards the flight information to him as soon as they get off the phone.

 

Eduardo still wears slacks and dress shirts everywhere, even on planes, and Mark – Mark isn’t surprised anymore. He sees Eduardo before Eduardo sees him, because only Eduardo would look that good after an eighteen hour flight, and waits with his hands in his pockets for Eduardo to notice him.

“Mark?” Eduardo calls out, hesitant, and Mark smiles at him, wonders just when Eduardo got so damn beautiful. He’s tanner and older, but still Eduardo, still _Wardo_ and Mark’s heart hurts, just a little.

Eduardo is glowing fainting and Mark doesn’t take that personally, knows that Eduardo will probably always glow, but he resolves to try and keep his distance. He can’t fuck this up. Not again.

Eduardo looks faintly upset. “Mark, I forgot to tell you – I forgot to book a hotel reservation, so I’ll have to do that before we go to the party, I’m so sorry –”

And _no_ , Mark thinks, _that’s not a problem._ “Stay with me.” It comes out – more like an order than a request, which makes him flush, but Eduardo looks confused.

“What?”

“Stay with me.” Mark repeats. “My house – I have a spare room.”

“Oh.” Eduardo says. “Um…” he pulses brighter and Mark wonders what he’s thinking, wonders if he’s remembering the hallway and the rain and Mark saying _I’m afraid you’ll get left behind_ , and Mark waits. He knows, now, not to push Eduardo, knows Eduardo has to dip his toe in the water before he decides it’s all right.

“Yeah, okay,” Eduardo agrees finally, and his eyes are unreadable.

Mark doesn’t try to figure him out. He just grabs Eduardo’s bag and leads them to his car.

“Your car seems, um,” Eduardo frowns down at it, brow furrowed, and Mark grins.

“Dusty?” He supplies. “I went on a road trip a month or so ago.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Utah,” Mark says, slinging Eduardo’s bags into the trunk and opening his door. Eduardo slips into the passenger seat and looks at Mark with interest.

“Why Utah?”

“I needed to get away,” Mark says after a minute. He doesn’t know how to explain, doesn’t know how to convey what it was like, losing Sean, and how the emptiness of the desert was the only thing big enough to hold his pain. “It was – when I had just found out.”

He glances at Eduardo and sees Eduardo looking at him with quirked lips and soft eyes, and it makes Mark blink at him, unsure.

“I’m sorry,” Eduardo tells him, low and intense, the way he had been when he said _If there’s something wrong, if there’s ever anything wrong, you can tell me. I’m the guy that wants to help_. “I’m so sorry, Mark, I –” His throat works but he doesn’t say anything else and Mark feels tired.

He nods, can’t quite bring himself to say anything and Eduardo is shining brightly, but not from past pain and that’s something, that’s enough for Mark to reach out and hesitantly touch Eduardo on the arm.

“Thanks,” his voice is gruff and after a minute Eduardo nods, and Mark turns back to the steering wheel and wonders what is happening.

\---

Chris’s party is being held at Dustin’s and Eduardo suggests they go right there – his stuff will be safe in Mark’s car – so Mark pulls up in front of Dustin’s house and lets Eduardo goggle at it.

“It’s like…the ultimate bachelorpad!” He says, and Mark laughs, parks the car and lets Eduardo get out and ring the doorbell before him.

Lacey is already there and she swoops on Mark, leaving Chris and Dustin to greet Eduardo.

“Are you okay? Is it weird? Do I need to run interference?”

Mark smiles at him. “It’s – yeah, it’s weird. But it’s a good weird.”

“‘Good-weird.’” Lacey quotes back at him. “I’ve never heard you be so inarticulate before, Mark.” Her eyes are soft and she’s smiling, and she presses a bottle of Blue Moon into his hand. “I’m happy for you.”

“Christ, Lace, it’s not like we’re dating,” Mark protests, popping off the top of the bottle. “We’re just – being friendly again.”

“Still exciting,” Lacey says. “It’s more than any of us thought would ever happen.”

“Is there an office wide betting pool? Is there a gossip column?” He bumps Lacey’s shoulder with his own and she laughs and bites her lip.

“Not telling.”

 

Chris looks, well, _shocked_ that so many people are at his party, and demands that he doesn’t have to give a speech, which Dustin agrees too. Mark figures out that while he and Dustin only know half of these people, Chris knows all of them, and Eduardo – well, Eduardo knows a quarter of them, but Eduardo makes friends so easily that he talks to as many people as Chris does.

Mark says hello to Andrew and makes a loop, mingles and does what Chris has instructed he do at formal gatherings, thinks it’s good protocol for all parties. Dustin keeps pressing alcohol into everyone’s hands and encouraging the DJ to play throwback songs, and everyone pretends to look embarrassed.

Mark always know where Eduardo is, because Eduardo is shining, and Mark wants to know if it’s because this is what he could have had or because he’s sad that Chris is leaving. He can’t tell, doesn’t know how to decipher the nuances of Eduardo’s light but think it’s a bit like a scar – permanent, even if it changes.

Lacey ends up tugging Dustin onto the dance floor, possibly to save him from embarrassing himself and Mark watches, feels a smile curl his lips.

Everyone he cares about is here, is within his sight and it’s awesome. It’s – he doesn’t know how to describe it, thinks of Sean and only grows more grateful that they’re all here.

He doesn’t deserve them and he knows that, but he’s going to hang on as long as he fucking can.

 

Chris finds him as the party begins to wind down and slings an arm over Mark’s shoulders.

“Is it weird?” He asks without preamble and Mark shrugs.

“Is it weird to see so many people at a party throw in your honor?”

Chris wrinkles his nose. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Mark agrees. Then: “yeah, it’s weird.”

“I’m gonna miss you,” Chris is looking at him intently and Mark looks back at him and then looks away. “I’ll worry about you, Mark.”  
“About my ability to consistently generate bad publicity for Facebook?” Mark jokes, and Chris shakes his head.

“About _you_ , idiot,” he says, but his voice is fond. “I won’t be there to check on you and make sure you’re eating.”

“I’ll have Dustin and Lacey,” Mark tells him. “Besides, I think I can be trusted to take care of myself. I am an adult.”

“Will you have Eduardo?” Chris asks, and _wow_ , okay, Mark wasn’t expecting that.

“I don’t know,” he admits, shoves his hands in his pockets and hunches his shoulders. “I – it’s weird, Chris.”

“Can you still…see pain, and everything?” Chris asks and Mark nods, pulling a face. “Is he – is he still hurting?”

“Yeah,” Mark says. “That’s – that’s why I don’t know. I think he’s always going to hurt, Chris. I really fucked up.” He’s said that a hundred times before but it bears repeating. “I really fucked up and I don’t know how to fix it.”  
“You’ll think of something,” Chris says.

“You – really?” Mark says, shaken by this blind faith, and Chris just nods.

“Whenever there’s something you don’t like, you do something about it. Most people don’t. But you do, and you always have, and that’s how I know. You’re going to figure this out, Mark.”

“I’m going to miss you, too,” Mark says in a rush and Chris smiles at him, fond and lopsided, and Mark doesn’t know what to do, thinks that everyone leaves him in the end and this time it isn’t even his fault.

\---

Lacey finds him when they’re leaving, kisses him on the cheek and murmurs something quiet and soft in his ear, and then leaves. Mark catches Eduardo watching them with a furrowed brow and wonders about that but doesn’t say anything. They wave goodbye to Chris and Dustin and walk to Mark’s car.

Eduardo isn’t quite drunk but isn’t quite sober and Mark doesn’t say anything as he drives them home, trusts Eduardo will talk if he wants too.

He’s right, because halfway home Eduardo turns to him and says, almost accusatorily, “You didn’t tell me you were dating her.”

“Who?” Mark asks, eyes on the road. He thinks back. “Oh, Lacey?”

“The one that kissed you at the end.”

“On the _cheek_ , Wardo.” The nickname just slips out. “She’s – she’s one of my best friends, and my personal assistants. Besides, why do you care if I’m dating her?”

Eduardo flinches and Mark sighs. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”

“I was just wondering.”

“We slept together once,” Mark allows. “And it didn’t mean anything. She just needed someone and I wanted to be there for her.” He glances at Eduardo, who is looking at him with a very confused expression. “What?”

“You wanted to be there for her.” Eduardo repeats. “I – but she’s your employee?”

“She’s also my friend.” Mark says.

“You always mixed business and friendship,” Eduardo says, the bitterness almost hidden in the alcohol-thickness of his tone and Mark glances at him, sees that Eduardo is glowing with a dark, angry gold.

“I –” What is he supposed to say? That this is different? That it’s not going to end the same? That he and Lacey are mature enough to figure out where the boundaries between work and play are?

“I’m not in love with her,” Mark says instead.

“And that makes it different?” Eduardo demands.

“Yes.” Mark says before he can stop himself.

Eduardo doesn’t say anything.

 

Eduardo carries his own bags in and Mark lets him be, goes out to stare at the pool instead.

Eduardo finds him there – Mark can see his light before he can see him, and turns to regard Eduardo warily.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” Eduardo says without preamble. He’s sober now, Mark can tell – there’s no slowness to his movements or thickness to his voice and his eyes are tired. He’s still glowing, pulsing steadily but Mark has resigned himself to this.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” Mark counters, and holds Eduardo’s gaze. “It was wrong. I hurt you. I – I’ve never forgiven myself.”

“For what you did or for hurting me?”

“For hurting you.” And that’s what might separate them forever, because Mark did what he thought was necessary. He would have done it another way, if he had known it would hurt Eduardo so badly, but he would have done it because Eduardo was going to ruin the company. He thinks Eduardo knows that now.

He just doesn’t know if it’s enough.

“I always thought I didn’t matter to you,” Eduardo says slowly. “But – I did, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” Mark answers quickly. “You – You matter a lot.”

“Not past tense?”

“Not past tense,” Mark repeats.

Eduardo doesn’t say anything to that. Mark feels Eduardo’s eyes on him and suddenly can’t breath, is tugging at his clothing, at his shirt, before his brain catches up.

“Come swim,” he says through his t-shirt, drags it fully off and sees Eduardo staring at him, perplexed. “It’s – it’s so hot out.”

“Yeah.” Eduardo agrees and then he’s unbuttoning his shirt, and Mark can’t bear to look. That’s something so – so private, so intimate, so he looks away and undoes his cargo shorts, steps out of his flip flops and walks over to the edge of the pool.

Eduardo joins him and Mark knows he’s only wearing his black briefs but can’t bring himself to look, steps into the water before his body gets any ideas.

It’s cold enough to shock him and he gasps, and then Eduardo climbs in as well and Mark can hear Eduardo laughing.

“I love that you have a pool,” Eduardo says and Mark turns and smiles at him.

 

They’re quiet for a bit, splashing around and Mark remembers when Dustin zip-lined down to the pool in the rental house. Eduardo is looking at him and Mark finds he can’t escape Eduardo, because even if he’s not looking at Eduardo the entire pool is gilded by Eduardo’s light. He can see it even when he’s underwater, even when he shuts his eyes.

“Were you jealous?” Eduardo asks, out of the blue, and Mark thinks about asking him to clarify.

“Yes,” he says instead, because he was jealous of Sean Parker and jealous of Eduardo and jealous of Christy.

“I want to understand, Mark,” Eduardo says, wading closer to him and Mark shuts his eyes.

He talks. He doesn’t know how long he talks or really what he says – that he’s sorry. That he came to Eduardo because he trusted him, because he respected him, because Eduardo was the best and Eduardo was his best friend. That yeah, he was jealous of Eduardo being in the club but it didn’t matter because they had Facebook, and it was started by Erica Albright curling her lip at him but it continued when he was smiling with Eduardo outside the bathrooms, when he realized that meant something. Mark talks about how the dilutions were about business and he didn’t realize Eduardo wouldn’t understand, talks about how Eduardo wouldn’t listen and Mark wouldn’t talk to him in a way he’d understand, and then Mark loses track of what he says, talks about everything that’s happened – the dilutions, meeting Lacey, losing Sean, finding Eduardo. Being frightened that he’ll lose Eduardo again. Realizing Facebook isn’t enough and never was.

Mark only stops talking when he realizes it’s totally dark.

He opens his eyes.

Eduardo is standing in front of him and swallows hard when Mark opens his eyes. Mark…Mark doesn’t know what to say, has to squint to see Eduardo clearly because Eduardo? Eduardo isn’t glowing.

And it’s like this is the first time everything has ever been silent, because it’s just them, and it’s so dark. Mark can only see outlines and vague shapes, can see half of Eduardo’s face from the moonlight and the stars but the rest is shadows, and the water looks deep and foreboding, and Mark doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he’s touching Eduardo on the arm. Eduardo steps closer, leans down until he’s resting his forehead against Mark’s, and everything is very dark and very still.

“I thought you didn’t care,” Eduardo breathes, and Mark swallows because Eduardo is _there_ , this is _real_ and all he can see are the outlines of Eduardo’s eyes.

“I care too much,” Mark whispers back.

He tilts his face up slowly, giving Eduardo time to back away, but Eduardo doesn’t move and Mark kisses him.

He tastes like chlorine and jetlag and forgiveness, and Mark grips Eduardo’s arms and kisses him again, feels Eduardo’s day-old stubble drag at his skin and smiles into the kiss.

Eduardo makes a soft, gentle noise in the back of his throat and it makes Mark bite his lip, but then Eduardo is kissing him back, and it’s – fuck. Mark doesn’t know what to say or how to process it, just knows that this is the best thing and there is something building between them, a heat that is rising and then Eduardo is wrapping two possessive arms around Mark and fisting one hand in his curls.

“Mark,” Eduardo grounds out, and he’s panting, and Mark grins at him.

“Yes?”

“Fuck,” Eduardo says, and shoves him against the side of the pool, kisses him greedily and shoves one thigh between Mark’s. Mark is hard in his wet boxers and knows Eduardo is to, can feel him against his leg and it makes him kiss Eduardo harder, makes him nip at Eduardo’s lips until they’re French kissing lazily, tongues meeting, and Mark tries to draw Eduardo closer to him because it’s not enough, none of this is enough.

“Get out of the pool,” Eduardo growls, and Mark grins at him.

“Why?”

“Wanna fuck you properly,” Eduardo says between kisses, moves from Mark’s mouth to his neck. “Can’t in here.”

Mark scrambles out of the pool and steps out of his boxer, leaving them on the pavement. Eduardo does too, steps out of his briefs and they probably look funny, erections bobbing as they shuffle inside Mark’s house and try to navigate the stairs while kissing hungrily, Mark grabbing Eduardo’s shoulders and Eduardo huffing a laugh even he trips and almost falls.

Then they’re in the bedroom and Mark wonders how this is happening, bites Eduardo on the shoulder and is relieved to see a small spark of light. Eduardo isn’t dark because Mark has lost the ability to see pain. He’s dark because he’s not hurting.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Mark bursts out, unable to stop himself and though it’s dim in his bedroom, he can see Eduardo smile, can see his eyes crinkle.

 

It passes too quickly for Mark, maybe because he’s raw and Eduardo had reduced him to sensation only but Eduardo guides him, kisses his neck, his hands, his stomach, rubs circles on his back and works three slick fingers into him with an infinite amount of patience. Mark’s body is singing, is humming beneath Eduardo’s touch and he doesn’t know what to do, but Eduardo is _there_ and Mark is shaking, shuddering, as Eduardo’s fingers brush his prostate.

“Wardo,” Mark gasps, and Eduardo smiles down at him, his eyes and mouth soft enough to make something in Mark’s chest constrict.

“I need you,” Mark hears himself say and Eduardo presses a kiss to the inside of his thigh and then withdraws, kisses Mark again when Mark writhes in protest. Mark props himself up on his forearms and watches Eduardo roll on the condom, and then Eduardo is looming over him and pushing into him, so slowly that Mark thinks he’s going to die. There’s heat running up his spine and he’s going to explode just because Eduardo won’t fucking move fast enough, and then Eduardo bottoms out and Mark claws at his back because he needs even more, he wants to curl up _inside_ Eduardo just to know that he’ll never lose Eduardo, that Eduardo will never be free of him.

“Mark,” Eduardo manages, voice tight and awe-struck, and Mark looks at him and wonders if his pupils are as big as Eduardo’s bites his lip and shifts his hips.

Eduardo moves, _finally_ , sliding out and then thrusting back in and Mark groans, even though sex noises are fucking stupid, because it really does feel this good and he can’t even _think_ , it’s so good, and Eduardo is sucking a hickey onto his neck and thrusting into him, and Eduardo is _inside_ of him and Mark thinks he could come from that alone.

Mark has never made love before but he knows this is what it is, and that makes him gasp and kiss whatever of Eduardo he can reach. They move together, the noises of sex falling away, the moonlight streaming in through the open window and Mark feels hot and cold all over whenever Eduardo’s cock brushes his prostate or whenever Eduardo’s lips find his.

“I love you,” Mark manages finally, and Eduardo pauses and looks at him.

“I love you,” Eduardo says back to him, like he means it, and words are beyond Mark at that, because Eduardo is _inside_ of him and it’s still so dark and this is happening even after what he did, and then Eduardo is kissing him and somehow thrusting and curling a hand around Mark’s cock, and Mark comes so hard he whites out, knows only that Eduardo fucks him through it and comes afterwards with a drawn out whine and the soft weight of him over Mark’s body.

\---

 He wakes up to Eduardo sprawled out next to him, mouth slack and eyes shut, and Mark feels something so strong and powerful in his chest that he presses a hand to it, thinks about violence and realizes he’s never associated that with love.

Because that’s what this is, he’s in love, he’s stupid and so in love with Eduardo that it almost hurts, and he thinks that watching Eduardo sleep is all he needs, is enough, is better than Facebook.

Much better than Facebook.

He has to get up, wanders down to the pool and fishes his phone out from his cargo pants, texts Chris and Dustin that he won’t be in the office today before returning to Eduardo, who stirs at his return.

He looks at Mark and smiles, eyes crinkling and fond, and Mark smiles back, unable to help himself.

“I thought I’d take the day off,” Mark says, because he can’t bear to do anything else. If he touches Eduardo now he’s not going to stop and he doesn’t know how they stand, knows Eduardo was sober when they made love last night but still suspects that he’ll see it as a mistake. Chalk it up to jetlag. Something.

“Yeah?” Eduardo hums. “Would you spend it with me?”

“If you want,” Mark says shyly, though he’s never been good at shy. “I – I wasn’t sure…”

“Do you regret last night?” Eduardo says, and he’s not smiling anymore, but he’s not glowing either, so Mark shakes his head.

“Do you?”

“No, no I don’t,” Eduardo says frankly and – okay. Mark can work with that.

 

They make breakfast, or rather, Eduardo makes breakfast and Mark watches, sipping his hot chocolate because he is a child, and then – Eduardo burns himself, nothing major, just singes his hand on the pan and Mark watches for the light to bloom beneath his skin, watches for the light that never comes.

“Eduardo?” Mark says, standing suddenly and going to Eduardo, fitting his arms around Eduardo’s waist. “I need to pinch you.”

“Um?” Eduardo says, flipping a pancake. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you after,” Mark says. “Can I?”

Eduardo nods and Mark does, pinches him hard enough for Eduardo to yelp, but there’s still no light, just a red mark on Eduardo’s skin and Mark steps back, floored, confused, unable to say anything.

“Mark?” Eduardo turns off the stove after depositing the last pancake onto its plate and turns to him, looking concerned. “Are you alright?”

“I – yeah. I just – I have to call Dustin.”

“What about?”

“Chris’s present,” Mark lies, and Eduardo raises an eyebrow but nods at him, so Mark takes his phone and goes up to his room, dials Dustin and is relieved when Dustin picks up and informs him that he’s with Chris and that they are Concerned with a capital C.

“You don’t just _take_ time off from work unless someone has died. Did Eduardo die? Did he kill you with his Bambi eyes?”

“Shut up, Dustin,” Mark snaps. “I – something did happen, though.”

“You slept together,” Dustin and Chris chorus, and Mark scowls at the phone because it’s not fair that they already _know_.

“Yeah,” he hedges. “But – last night, I could still see pain, right?”

“Right,” Chris says.

“Today I can’t.”

“At all?”

“At all.”

“Well yeah,” Dustin says, and he sounds supremely unworried.

“What do you mean, ‘ _oh yeah?’”_ Mark demands.

“It started with Wardo, so it makes sense that it’s gonna end with Wardo,” Dustin explains. Mark can almost hear Chris giving him a look. “Like, you’ve done what you needed to do. Become a better person. Helped people. Fixed things with Wardo. All is right in the universe. Now you don’t need super powers anymore.”

 _I wouldn’t call this a superpower_ is what Mark wants to say, but he bites his lip instead.

“It could be that Eduardo has become an exception,” Chris offers. “Maybe you can still see other people’s pain.”

“No,” Mark says. “I’ve always been the only exception. And it’s – it’s not because I had sex with him, I mean, it’s not because of sex, because I slept with Lacey and I could still see her pain, and everyone else’s.”

“I knew you slept with her!” Dustin crows over the phone and Mark rolls his eyes and can hear Chris say, disgusted, “Yeah, _months ago_ , where have you been?”

“Are you going to tell him?” Chris asks, and Mark – Mark doesn’t know, wishes he could shrug or blush or run away.

“I don’t know.” He says instead.

“You should.” Dustin says, firm and serious for once. “You owe him that much, Mark.”

The stupid thing is, Dustin is right. Mark wishes he could flip Dustin off. He hangs up instead.

 

Eduardo is drinking coffee and reading the paper when Mark comes back into the kitchen, but he looks up and Mark smiles at him helplessly, because he can’t _not_. Eduardo smiles back, but he looks wary and Mark understands that, draws up a chair and rubs a finger against his palm.

“I need to tell you something.” He says, and – that’s scary, how he can tell that Eduardo is hurting, how panic scuttles across Eduardo’s face.

“Alright,” Eduardo says, forcing a smile, and he puts down the paper. Mark wants to touch him, wants to reassure him but he doesn’t want to lie, so he takes a deep breath instead.

“When I had that headache at the depositions, I passed out, do you remember?” Eduardo is nodding, and he looks more concerned than hurt now. “I woke up in your lap, and I – do you remember what I said?”

“You asked me why I was glowing,” Eduardo says slowly. Mark watches him carefully, looks for suspicion or anger and sees only confusion.

“The thing is,” Mark says, “you _were_ glowing. Because you were in pain. You were scared that something had happened to me, I guess, and scared you were going to lose me, and hurting because the depositions were awful and I was a dick.”

“I…”

“When I woke up, I realized that whenever someone was glowing, it was because they were hurting.” Mark swallows. His throat seems very dry. “Physical pain and mental pain – they’re different, they _look_ different, and it took me a bit but I figured out what was what. And then…then I couldn’t stop noticing it, Wardo. Everyone was hurting. There was this man, Andrew – actually he works for me, he’s not just some guy. His name is Andrew Green. He was glowing so fucking brightly all the time, right after the depositions and it was more mental than physical, so I asked around and I learned that his wife was dying of terminal cancer. So I gave him paid time off and stuff and he invited me to the funeral, and he was – he was fucking _lit up_ at the funeral, but also sort of relieved. And Lacey. Lacey cuts herself, or used too, and I knew because I could see the lines through her shirt because they were all lit up. That’s how I knew she needed help. That’s how I knew she needed someone to be there for her.”

Eduardo’s face is unreadable and Mark tries not to read too much into that.

“And – it was around that time that I started wondering, truly wondering, why this had happened to me. I’ve never heard of it happening to anyone else, and I did a lot of research. But – you know I’m not good with people. But I didn’t have to be in order to relate to them, because pain? Pain is a fucking epidemic, and everyone is hurting and the only way to fix that is to help them, is to do what you can. And I realized…this was making me a better person. Not, like, because I had _decided_ to be a better person. It just happened.”

“And Sean?”

“Sean had memory hurt. He was hurting so long over something that had happened a while ago, and I realized after a while that’s why he was an addict and that’s why he slept around, and his pain was – it as almost tainted, it was such a deep gold, almost pink, and when he was hospitalized I forced him into rehab.”

Eduardo is silent.

“I thought I was helping him, thought I was being a good friend. I told him either he went to rehab or I’d fire him and I drove him to rehab and I told him – told him everything, about the fact I could see pain, and he agreed to try for me. Not for him, for _me_.”

“But he killed himself,” Eduardo says slowly, and Mark’s skin is too tight, his eyes are hot. He nods, swallows hard.

“He was sober when he did it, Wardo. He said – he said that rehab makes it worse, and I didn’t listen, and he killed himself.”

“You didn’t make him kill himself.” Eduardo says softly, brushing his thumb over Mark’s knuckles. “You gave him the opportunity to get better, Mark. He chose not too.”

“But – it doesn’t seem like that, Wardo. It feels like my fault, and I didn’t understand how I could have this – this gift and still fuck everything up so badly.

“Then I saw you again.”

Eduardo swallows and Mark meets his gaze. He doesn’t know how to convey this, how to say it right but he’s going to try, because there’s a sense of finality here. This is it.

“You were glowing again, and I figured out you would always be in pain around me because I fucked up so much, and I accepted that. But you told me to try. And – I did, Eduardo, I tried because all I wanted was to fix this. To fix what I had done, to make it up to you, something. I didn’t count on this whole pain-light thing making me more aware of what _I_ was feeling, or had been feeling, and I didn’t realize until very recently that I had been in love with you and too stupid and jealous to say it. I didn’t have the words. I wasn’t ready.”

“And last night?”

“It was dark.” Mark shakes his head, unable to describe that – the darkness, after so much light. “I told you everything about – about before, and you were bright, you were lighting up the pool, and then you weren’t. You weren’t hurting anymore.”

Eduardo is smiling.

“And – I knew that I could still see pain because when I gave you a hickey I could still see some light there, but you weren’t hurting emotionally and that’s all I wanted, and then we were having sex and I just had to tell you that I loved you, because I do. I – I love you so much.

“But now I can’t see pain at all.”

Eduardo brow furrows and Mark feels himself blush, looks down at his lap. “Dustin isn’t surprised. He – he thinks this all happened because of you, because I needed to grow as a person or whatever. And –” Mark looks up. “I think he’s right. It started with you and it ended with you and that’s all I want, Wardo. I want you. I’m not a mutant anymore and I don’t have any crazy superpowers anymore but I love you, and I want you here with me.”

“Okay.” Eduardo says simply, like it’s just that easy. He curls his fingers around Mark’s, smiles gently at him.

“You believe me?” Mark asks, because – well, he was expecting at least a little resistance. But Eduardo is smiling crookedly.

“I do,” he says. “We’ve – everything that’s happened to us has been so crazy, Mark. What are the odds of founding a company like Facebook? Like getting together after everything that has happened? This – this makes sense. It fits.”

“I love you,” Mark says, stuttering and fast, and he watches Eduardo’s smile grow.

“I love you too, Mark. And – I’m proud of you.”

\---

It’s not perfect because nothing is perfect. Eduardo has to fly back to Singapore and they do long distance, and Dustin jokes about how he feels like he’s also in a long distance relationship, but with Chris, since they Skype all the time and play Xbox with him. Mark spends more time on the phone or Skyping with Eduardo than he’s ever spent on the phone or Skyping with _anyone_ , and when he brings this up Eduardo smiles and laughs, looking fond and also flattered.

Lacey is – well. Lacey is over the moon, is so pleased that Mark and Eduardo “have finally got their shit together!” that she smiles really big whenever Mark mentions Eduardo or whenever Eduardo visits.

Lacey still sleeps over sometimes, when she needs another person around or when Mark is lonely and Eduardo is learning to be okay with that. Mark knows he’s jealous but he’s explained how not-attracted to Lacey he is enough that he thinks Eduardo gets it, and besides, he’s caught Lacey and Dustin eying each other when no one else is looking.

(Mark confides to Eduardo that he’s thinking about setting them up and Eduardo convinces him not too, says that it will happen organically or not at all and that Mark is a terrible matchmaker.)

Mark calls his mom up when Eduardo decides to move in with him and she starts crying, and insists they call Randi and tell the rest of his sisters, which – Mark had no idea so many people were invested in him or Eduardo, and he wonders how the people that are making a movie about them will handle this.

He finds that he likes surprising everyone, thinks that it is true to form. _I’m CEO, bitch_ he thinks to himself, and laughs loudly enough that Dustin sticks his head into Mark’s office to find out what’s so funny.

 

They get a dog, because Mark remembers and brings it up and Eduardo is so excited to live in an actual house, to live with _him_ , that he agrees. They get a Puli and he’s more like a white ball of fluff than a canine, but Eduardo names him Beast and cuddles him against his chest until Beast falls asleep, and Mark looks at him and feels stupid over the way his heart swells.

“I think I’m the Grinch,” he tells Dustin the next morning. “Eduardo is making my heart swell.”  
“That’s the sappiest thing I have ever heard, ever!” Dustin declares dramatically. “Mark, m’boy, you sicken me with your declarations of passion.”  
“Shut _up_ ,” Mark says, but he’s smiling, and he can’t help but think about their future, realizes that they _have_ a future, that the future holds domesticity and breakfasts and Beasts and…Mark stops himself, because he’s not ready to think about that.

 

One morning Eduardo rolls over and looks at Mark and says, very seriously, “I’ve forgiven you. You can stop beating yourself up,” and Mark doesn’t know what to say, because – _really?_ But he looks at Eduardo, really looks at him and can’t see anything but softness and this terrifying, beautiful thing Mark knows is love, and he hopes his face reflects this, hopes Eduardo knows just how much Mark loves him.

“Thank you,” Mark whispers, because that’s what he wants, that’s really just what he wanted to begin with.

It’s anticlimactic, because Eduardo goes back to sleep and Mark lays awake and stares at the ceiling and at the shadows cast by the trees outside their window, and wonders if this would have happened without everything else.

Mark thinks it’s funny, because Eduardo – Eduardo has been his link to the outside world for so long. Eduardo is his best friend, and now his boyfriend, and he used to be part of Facebook but he’s not anymore (which is better, Mark thinks), but he knows how to get Mark to relax and how to make Mark come and how to make Mark hot chocolate, which is all Mark really needs.

Eduardo is beautiful, because he’s a good person and he didn’t need some weird divine interference in his life to be a good person. He just…he _is_ , and Mark doesn’t understand that, thinks this is so humbling and ridiculous that someone like Eduardo could love someone like him.

Could forgive someone like him for the thing he did.

Mark hasn’t forgiven Sean for killing himself, doesn’t know if he ever will, because he’s not like Eduardo. He’s not as free with his emotions and he holds grudges longer and deeper than Eduardo ever will.

But if Eduardo has forgiven Mark for the dilutions, then maybe Mark can forgive himself for what he’s done, and what he didn’t do.

He turns over to Eduardo, throws an arm over Eduardo’s waist and snuggles up behind him.

“I need you,” Mark says quietly, and hears Eduardo hum softly in reply.

“I’m here for you,” he says, and it sounds like a promise. It sounds like forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. It's over. It's finally over. Thank you an endless amount to everyone that helped me with this and that tolerated me bothering them about it. Rachel, Berry, Annie, Rose, Diana, Abriata, Venla, Jill, Jackie, my boyfriend A, Annie again because without her this fic wouldn't exist??? Wow I am so emotional IT IS FINALLY DONE.  
> Alright.  
> Some trivia:  
> \- Adhara is the star that is on the flag of Brazil and I never managed to slip this explanation into the fic but that's why Mark associates Eduardo with Adhara so much. Adhara is also known as Epsilon Canis Majoris and is the second brightest star in the Canis Majoris constellation. I figured this is a nerdy thing Mark would know.  
> \- The timeline of this fic is very confused. Eduardo didn't give his citizenship up until late 2012/early 2013 and this fic is set in 2007-2008 or so, the year after the dilutions and the year Chris Hughes left to help Obama get elected. I have no idea when rl!Mark got Beast so just roll with it.  
> \- Lacey isn't a WoC just to have diversity, I wanted her confusion over her culture and identity to mirror Mark's confusion over his identity and power, since Lacey is half Mexican and half Dutch and Mark is ethnically Jewish but not religious, but keeps tossing around the idea of the divine due to his 'power.'  
> \- This fic was inspired entirely by the Anne Carson quote that is in the beginning and the title, and I started writing it around August 2012. [There is an entire tag on my blog for it.](http://eisenbergandelephants.tumblr.com/tagged/glowing-au) I urge you to check it out because there were quotes I wanted to include at the beginning of each chapter but that seemed a bit campy and the tag will give you some more understanding and just expose you to some awesome lit and art!  
> \- I thought it was fitting to make pain on the color spectrum of white to yellow considering the stupidly yellow filter that David Fincher used to film The Social Network. For maximum angst please rewatch and notice how yellow certain parts of the movie are. Examples: [1](http://media.tumblr.com/7cc84485fa4fe630ebe0664d064658b3/tumblr_inline_mmmf51aEvw1qz4rgp.gif), [2](http://media.tumblr.com/ad9aed4d9ab2d2c48e8ef42d3423b7b9/tumblr_inline_mmmev5YZuf1qz4rgp.jpg), [3](http://media.tumblr.com/e1524016ffe7301107908c79ca9e10d5/tumblr_inline_mmmequ4nAO1qz4rgp.jpg), [4](http://eisenbergandelephants.tumblr.com/post/49680753912).  
> \- There is a fanmix for this fic because I am a joke, you can find it [here](http://8tracks.com/myownremedy/you-could-dress-this-wound) on 8tracks.
> 
> Thank so much, thank you for reading. I will probably add proper notes when I am more coherent. <3

**Author's Note:**

> [Come say hi.](marnz.tumblr.com)


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